For the Financial Times I wrote about one of my favourite paintings and how it relates to one of my favourite activities, housesitting other people’s beautiful homes. To read about the joys of house sitting, and of leaving again, click here.
For The Fence: How My Dad Poisoned Himself Making Spitting Image Puppets
For this piece for The Fence I asked my dad to cast his mind back 40-odd years to one of the many weird and chaotic occurrences of his special effects career that spanned the 1970s-2010s and was extremely (and almost exclusively) weird and chaotic. This is how he poisoned himself while making the prototypes for the original Spitting Image… CLICK HERE.
Illustration by Viz cartoonist Davie Jones.
Article For The Guardian
For The Guardian, I wrote about how the rural housing crisis has been exacerbated by the pandemic. This stretches all the way from Devon and Cornwall to the Hebrides. It’s so much worse than I thought it was, and I knew it was bad. Second homes have become a major problem—if you have a second home in an area where there’s a housing crisis you should be renting it (affordably) to the people who are currently being made homeless. Let’s hope something changes, fast. To read it, click here.
Overheard In Art Galleries Piece For The Fence
Feature For Literary Review
Seen a lot of manifestos being published recently? Manifestos are in the zeitgeist again, but his time it’s different. For Literary Review I wrote about what commercialisation means for manifestos and their movements. How radical can something mass market be? Read online here.
Or in print here:
Suze Drives Fast
Very happy to make a return to short stories with a short published by the great people at The Common Breath. ‘Suze Drives Fast’ is about two women existing in the aftershock. About what life is like after you might think it’s all over. Read it here: http://thecommonbreath.com/blogfiction.html
New Article For Vogue
I wrote for British Vogue about why I wore my mother’s wedding dress after my parents divorced. About sentiment, superstition, heirlooms and searching for a sense of permanence this year. Wishing you all a happier new one. Read Here.
Motherisms Feat. Sweet Release and Cancelling
Lockdown has been eased. It’s June, or maybe July, it doesn’t matter any more, and we’re heading to a wedding dress fitting. In the car we both get our masks out of our bags and cover our faces. Mum whispers…
“God, I feel like I’m about to rob a bank.”
It’s typical Devon weather and blowing a gale and pissing with rain. I have gone for a bracing walk on the beach regardless, I come back and manage to coax mum out of the car for a brief stroll upon the headland.
Me: It’s good to get out in the elements to remind you you’re alive.
Mum (cowering from the rain-soaked gale): Yes, the elements are all fine it’s the rain I don’t like.
Me: That’s one of the elements.
Mum: I don’t like it.
Someone’s taken off lots of letters from ‘Mole Valley Farmers’ so it’s says ‘Le Valle’ . Mum immediately adopts a French accent…
“Oh zat is wondiful!”
A two year old is pushing a doll in a pram.
Mum: Oh, look so sweet.
I turn and look.
Mum: She’ll be pushing a real one in 10 years.
Me: Mum!
Mum: She will! That’s why I never gave you anything like that. It’s like they’re training these little girls to be carers from a very young age. Give them a space rocket, or a Maserati.
I’m trying to clear up the photos and things on mum’s phone. She hasn’t quite got her head around the technical language yet (although she has recently started referring to herself as “the mother board” having heard someone in a computer shop say it)….
“Well, I’ll just remove everything I don’t want because it’s taking up my doodaas.”
Two minutes in to showing her how to delete the photos she apparently does not know how to take…
Mum: Oh enough, I want old phone.
Me: But you won’t have WhatsApp.
Mum: Don’t care.
Me: But that’s your main form of communication.
Mum: I don’t like how they track everywhere you go, I want an old one. Us old hippies—
Me: Making life difficult for everyone.
We’re watching Judge Judy to get some tips. A man has broken up with his girlfriend but has taken some of the bedding. He is being questioned as to whether he is using a mattress.
Judge Judy: And do you sleep on the mattress she paid for?
Man: It is my primary mattress.
Me: “Primary mattress!”
Mum: Oh! That’s a good one! If you need me I may be contacted on my primary mattress.
I’m doing a shop for mum, there’s some special offers…
Me: Oh, they’re doing 3 for 2 on Nivea?
Mum: No, that could last me into the next life.
Test and track and test and trace or whatever it is isn’t going very well.
“They couldn’t test shit coming off a shovel — although they’re doing much more interesting stuff at the sewage works.”
We’re watching something on TV. A man holds a baby and the baby starts shrieking. Mum sympathises with the baby…
“Yeah man, men are psychos. No really, a lot of them are. I want to marry Willy Nelson, he’s bought up thousands of acres for marijuana farms and raised all these horses… but then I wouldn’t want to live in America, so we’ll have lead separate lives.
An announcement on the radio says they are “thinking of lockdown in Leicester due to a spike in cases…”
Me: Don’t think about it, just do it.
Mum: “He who hesitates is lost.”
Mum is apparently privy to what most people have been up to during lockdown…
“You wouldn’t know it but they’re all in their hot tubs, drinking prosecco and wife swapping with their neighbor.”
Mum’s car needs a new exhaust…
“Tyres and testicles, always expensive one way or the other.”
We’re listening to a woman signing a version of ‘Nessun Dorma’, it’s not very good.
Me: Leave it to Pavarotti, love.
Mum: Is it that woman who couldn’t sing that they made a film about?
Me: I don’t know. Covering my ears. God it’s dreadful.
Mum: Yes, it must be that woman.
Presenter: And that was Aretha Franklin!
Me: What?! She absolutely murdered that.
Mum: Oh dear no, not her finest hour.
It’s the 100th of 5000 wedding dress fittings. Mum huffed and puffed until I agreed to leave the house 45minutes earlier than I calculated was necessary. We have, of course, arrived 45 minutes early.
Me: We’re so early!
Mum: Well, I like to case the joint.
We drive past an old garage that we used to go to in this one horse town. Mum misses the old chap there.
Me: Just say, “Ron’s been on my mind, I was wondering how he is.”
Mum: Yeah, they’ll think I’m a witch.
A clip of a cartoon from my teenage years comes on. It obviously induces vivid flashbacks in mum…
Mum: Oh! Park Life! West Life!
Me: …South Park.
We’re watching the old Glastonburys and there’s some very exciting early ‘00s sort-of techno going down that I think is a bit hardcore rave scene for me. Mum on the other hand…
“Now it’s not Dreadzone is it? I love Dreadzone.”
Mum’s perusing Facebook. Everyone’s putting up photos of them in the ‘70s and now…
Mum: The women are fairing better than the boys.
Me: Do you want to do it?
Mum: No. *Squints at the screen.* Absolutely not.
Still miniscule, Mum has put on weight, as have many other people. Mum is aware it is because she has been eating huge mounds of toast and honey. Everyone else?
“They act like it’s an act of god!”
Mother is weeping at one of Alan Bennett’s tear-jerker ‘Talking Heads’, which I can’t say I thought was up there with his usual brilliance…
Me: Oh god, you’re easy —Bennett’s got your number.
Mum: Oh, anything gets me now.
We decide to flee to Fremmington Quay, I want some cider. I select a fine vintage bottle that is remarkably low priced.
Mum (looking at the elegant bottles I hold): Oh god no! Merry Down!
Me: What?
Mum: I haven’t seen that for 50 years—used to get very pissed on it as teenagers in Cambridge.
Me: It said “vintage”.
Mum: Yes… they’ve intentionally changed the bottle to dupe the next generation.
We’re driving past some new housing estates being built…
“I do hate all this middle-of-the road mock-brutalism”
We buy some veg from one of the farmers, he’s out of runner beans though. There’s three more farmers in this locale to try our luck and mum announces with verve…
“We’re going to visit every emporium to see what they have to offer!”
For the first time since I arrived, someone has indicated which direction they are going to turn their enormous vehicle.
Me: Indication! Signs of life!
Mum: Brain activity is what we’re looking for. There’s plenty of life, it’s brain activity most of them lack.
Getting the train back to Exeter…
Me: God, the train’s £11 for a single, it was £9 last time I was down.
Mum: There’s always an excuse for things to go up, it’s funny there’s never an excuse for them to go down.
Mum and I are gazing at the rising moon, soon to pass behind the beautifully hideous civic center, demonstrating our contradictory outlooks on existence…
Mum: Nothing matters very much.
Me: Or it all matters incredibly.
Mum: But there’s nothing you can do about it.
Me: And that’s what’s so wonderful.
A Tory MP has been done for sexual assault, or rape, or something awful, but they haven’t released his name.
Me: Must have an injunction of some sort.
Mum: There have to be good reasons for an injunction.
Me: Or a good lawyer.
The Canada Geese have returned to the estuary, and they float down the river and rave on the water every night, much to mother’s distress.
“Oh, I do hope they’re not going to have another party tonight. No, really, all that honking all night – too much.”
We’re driving through one of the one horse towns of my childhood that I still cherish. It’s changed, in some ways for the better, in many ways not. I look over at where the cattle market used to be by the swimming pool…
Me: Do they have any cows there anymore?
Mum: No, they don’t like the “animal faeces”. But they let they’re dogs crap everywhere, then they put it in a litter bag and throw it in a tree. What’s that about?!
Mother calls from the other room…
“Dystopia doesn’t suit me. Don’t like the wardrobe for dystopia, doesn’t suit anyone.”
I am explaining about cancelling and cancel culture.
Mum: Cancel me now!
Me: Oh believe me, if this had a big enough audience you’d be cancelled in a heartbeat.
Mum: Fucking great. No platform this bitch!
We overhear a group of avid runners. Some maybe over-avid?
Me, aghast: Did you hear that? She’s run 1400 miles since lockdown.
Mum: Not all at once, surely.
Mum is talking about Bojo’s plans to build a giant erection (bridge) from Scotland to Ireland.
“They’re on drugs.” She narrows her eyes. “I just don’t know what drugs.”
My mother and I thank other people in cars endlessly, even if we have been driven into a ditch, it’s “Thank you!” We smile to someone who has done exactly this and doesn’t even bother to acknowledge our existence. I am insulted. Mum…
“They’re rude, bourgeois people who have come down here to grow begonias.”
I am showing mum some photos from Fremmington Quay. I sneakily took one of her without permission.
“God! Who’s that strange old crone drinking Merry Down?”
Sometimes I get words stuck in my head, and sometimes I’m not even sure what they mean…
Me: What is a ‘contretemps’, an argument?
Mum: Yes, an argument: Contre. Temps.
Me: Just asking. I may know many things but I do not know all things absolutely.
Mum: That’s a surprise.
Me: If I don’t know something I’ll ask.
Mum: No that’s very wise, really. That’s problem with many people, they don’t ask when they don’t know.
We’re watching ‘Jane’, a film about Jane Austen, where there’s lots of glancing across rooms and playing with each other’s hair, but suddenly people are running joyfully down a hill. Mum sighs wistfully at the gleeful runners…
“Oh! How wonderful to be so young you could do such a thing without endangering yourself.”
Motherisms Feat. Memory Lane, Poet Laureates, and The Fiery Pits of Hell …
It’s that time of year again (my birthday), and to my mother’s delight (I’m sure), I imposed myself on her in Devon for a whole week. And we’ve actually even been speaking on the phone before then, which has led to many miscommunications …
I am in the last phase of my Master’s — it turns out it’s a lot of work, who knew? But now it is dissertation season …
Mum: Have you finished your dissertation?
Me: No, I haven’t even started it.
I’m on the phone to mum before her imminent London arrival ..
Me: We bought a nice organic chicken.
Mum: Oh yes, how is she?
(Apparently mum thought I’d said something about one of my friends. I’m not convinced though..)
Mum has now graced London with her presence and is tired of the whole thing by day two.
Me: It’s not just you, London is exhausting.
Mum: No but it’s different. For me it’s that your body is exhausted. You think you’re going somewhere and then another part of you drops off.
Mum’s been staying at my godfather’s in London, who has a very sophisticated TV set up by the sounds of it.
Mum: I pressed a button and then it started asking me hundreds of questions: how many hertz did I want, which of the 500 channels … I pressed some of the buttons and nothing seemed to happen, but I’ve probably launched a missile.
We’re on the leisurely 6 hour bus down from London to Devon together. We’re going through Chelsea, mum is giving me the guided tour of memory lane and is pointing at the roof garden of a flat my godfather rented …
Mum: The summer of Live Aid we were up there, listening to Cheech and Chong.
We’re sort of half-watching ‘Green Mile’ and our attention has drifted back to it momentarily ….
Prisoner (inexplicably) testing the electric chair for someone else and reciting his last wishes (?): Fried chicken dinner with gravy on the tatters and a shit in your hat and have Mae West sit on ma face cus I’m a horny mother fucker.
Police man: Hahahahaha
Tom Hanks: Ahahahaha
Other police man: Hahahaha
Mum: What an extraordinary sense of humour.
I‘ve had a very big job cancel last minute and need to conjure some financial magic. Mum has a suggestion ..
“If you want to raise money just pretend you’re a dog with a problem.”
We’ve been out for a charming day at a stately home like normal people, and even had a cream tea like normal people. Unfortunately we arrived when there were still a lot of other, truly normal, people there. However, we got lost on the guided walk and emerged 3hrs later through the undergrowth, having had to walk around a 10ft high ‘ha ha wall’ (not so funny) and my 73 year-old-mother climb over several fences, and by then everyone else had left …
Mum: That’s why it’s nice to come later in the day not all these people in brightly coloured kagools ruining the view.
We’re walking around the lovely stately home, it’s not too big, it’s not too small. Got a lovely garden, some fields, a stable, a pond, some chandeliers, a William Blake (on loan)…
Me [wistfully]: Yeah I could actually live somewhere like this I think.
Mum: Well, you’ll have to marry some chinless twat.
A Panty liner advert is on TV…
Advert: Women don’t have to be soft and bla bla …
Me: Oh god yes we know, you’re tough and a right old fucking bruiser. Good for you.
Mum: “Even on my period I’ll kill you.”
Advert: ….you can do anything, even if you are woman bla bla bla …
Mum: Oh god who writes this shit!
Mum’s friend has helped her locate a new car, a lovely little (10yr old) VW.
“He’s prouder of this than he his that Mossad wagon of his.”
Brexit news is on, we were never going to be able to avoid it entirely …
Mum: Ahhhh… Let’s see who killed who tonight.
It’s a couple of months ago. Mum has asked to read a poem of mine, I have duly sent it to her and have, after a week, received no feedback. I’m curious …
Me: Did you read my poem?
Mum: No … yes.
Me: Well you can’t have thought much of it if you forgot.
Mum: No, I think I noted its arrival but didn’t read it. I like everything you write.
Me: Ok.
Mum: Carol Anne Duffy’s coming to the end of her term.
Me: Yes, I think unfortunately I’m still a little obscure to become Poet Laureate
Mum: Obscure is so cool.
Mum is a firm believer in watching some good old fashioned mindless television, and then talking over all of it. ‘Bake Off’ is on..
Man making bread: I like a pert bun. *wink wink, nudge nudge*
Me: It always amazes me the amount of innuendo people manage to get into any sentence involving food
Mum: Oh yes it’s probably scripted innuendo now, sort of mandatory.
Mum hasn’t quite worked out how to work her touch screen phone with complete success.
Mum: When you call it says ‘sweep up’, so I sweep, and nothing happens!
Me: I think that’s swipe up mum, just touch it and move your finger up.
Mum: No, it’s sweep!
Me:….ok…..
There is such a thing as ‘Archers Anonymous’, and Mum’s on it …
“Let’s stir the buggers up! My daddy would have loved the internet.”
We’re watching a programme about 1992 as it’s the year mum started building our beloved house that is no longer ours. There’s a segment on ‘Wayne’s World’:
Mum: What’s this?
Me: Wayne’s World
Mum: Hmmm…not sure about this.
Me: No, I think this is right up your street — you liked ‘Dude Where’s My Car’.
Mum: … Yes I did.
The 1992 programme is now talking about Achy Breaky Heart (a song I’ve decided I very much like).
Someone with an angular haircut who thinks they’re very cool and probably into moaning at parties: Line dancing is the spawn of Satan.
Mum: There’s worse things than line dancing
Me: I’d do it.
Mum: I think I would too.
Someone else with angular haircut: It’s all hideous diamanté and frilled skirts.
Cutaway to exactly that.
Me: Looks great, I’m into it.
I leave the room momentarily, then return.
Mum: Oh no, it’s getting a little hitler youth now.
Me: Oh, shame.
All the houses down mum’s road seem to be being repainted (very slowly)…
Mum: I like the colours they’re painting these.
Me: Yes maybe they’ll eventually reach that penis.
Mum: What penis?
Me: The penis that’s been spray painted on someone’s doorway for about fifteen years.
Mum: Oh that penis! Yes, it’ll take a while to get rid of that.
Somehow — how exactly I do not know — mum has signed up to a cat website, she has no particular affection towards cats …
Mum: You’ve got to get me off this cat website.
Me: What cat website?
Mum [genuinely distressed]: I don’t know but they send me hundreds of cats a day, and I don’t know how to stop them!
I’m laughing.
Mum: They keep talking about their “babies”, “this baby”, “my baby”, “your baby” … it’s dangerous: it’s a cat.
Me: Ok. We’ll just unsubscribe you.
Mum, back-tracking: Well, one or two a day, that’s cool, I like animals ..
We’re watching the end of ‘Celebrity Masterchef’. I only recognise Zandra Rhodes, mum is helping me identify one of the other contenders …
Mum: He’s Joey Essex.
Me: Is he.
Mum: Yes he seems rather sweet actually, he just needs watering twice a week and that’s it.
We’re sitting down and ready to get competitive watching ‘University Challenge’….
Me: Jeremy Paxman hasn’t aged at all.
Mum: I was just thinking how much he had.
The students on ‘University Challenge’ are doing their “Hey, I’m James, you might remember me from …” intros and it’s making me cringe.
Mum: I do wish they wouldn’t do this “first name only” thing.
Me: It’s almost like they’re auditioning to be a presenter, it’s horrible.
Mum: It’s because it’s got to be caj. Everything’s got to be caj …. I’m surprised they’re even allowed to compete anymore.
A programme about WWII is on as I’m flicking through the channels…
Mum: Oh no! It’s handsome chaps doing serious stuff — amazing guys.
We have continued flicking, mum now has the remote and has hovered on the ‘Mash Report’…
Me: No.
Mum: Give it a chance, give it five minutes.
Me: No that’s far too long.
4 seconds later …
Mum: Yeup it is.
I’m on the phone to mum with a lovely paper bag full of ingredients for supper …
Me: I’m just walking back through the park from getting mushrooms.
Mum: Be careful foraging.
Me: I haven’t been foraging, I went to the shop!
I don’t know what mum is watching in the other room but I have a feeling it’s ‘Beverly Hills Housewives’ or some variation of because I hear her shouting at the television …
“Kick him to the curb honey!”
Two minutes later….
“He’s a twat get rid of him.”
I am a blessed angel and have cooked and washed up for the sixth night in row and just want to check it’s been recognised …
Me [impersonating mum]: Oh Jade, thank you so much for washing up again, you are a saint. When is your canonisation, please can I attend?
Mum: Yes I’m sure it will be very soon and I’ll be in the fiery pits of hell.
Me: Probably.
Mum: With all my mates.
If On A Winter’s Night A Computer ..
I wrote a piece for The Millions about how, in 1979, Italo Calvino predicted the AI author in one of his best-loved novels, and what the reality of that prediction now means for us writers, poets, journalists and translators, Can a machine ever compete in metaphysical matters? What happens to an author’s copyright when a machine learning algorithm “learns” from an author’s work? And what happens when something learns from only “good” works. Click here to read.
