Conformity and Expectation: Naivety of a budding artist – Part 4

We didn’t have a careers advisor at school. The only jobs we knew were those around us; bus-driver, postman, insurance collector. There was an article in the paper on a local commercial artist. I had no idea what it meant but I quite liked the idea. There was also an ad for a Systems Analyst.

After I casually mentioned I wanted to be an artist several aunts and uncles came to visit. Over the course of a weekend they each took me to one side and advised me to ‘get a proper job’. I could always paint in the evenings or weekends if I really wanted to.

1969 – I got O-levels in Maths and English, and a handful of GCSEs. My favourite subject was Science – Physics, Chemistry and Biology – how stuff worked. As it was a new school they wanted us to stay on to create a sixth form, but I couldn’t see how what we were studying bore any relation to getting a job.

When I said I wanted to be a Systems Analyst everyone said I had to have a degree in maths, and go to University, and probably be a genius, so I shelved the idea.

My mate Steve showed me an ad for the Police Cadets. We both applied and I got in but he didn’t. Out of an initial intake of 200 I was one of 20 that finally ‘passed-out’ and went on into the Met. For anyone who saw the series ‘Life on Mars’ http://www.tv.com/life-on-mars-uk/show/51334/summary.html it was vaguely similar but much more boring. We mutually agreed that I didn’t have the right temperament.

Homosexuality, drugs and porn were criminal activities. Everyone smoked on the bus, on the tube and in the cinema; can you imagine!

1974 – After working in a shipping office in Barking I got a job with an insurance firm in St James’ Square, just off Piccadilly; not far from the Royal Academy, and Cork Street. There was still plenty of Pop Art about – trivia, I saw exhibitions of Abstract Art – meaningless trivia, and the Tate were shortly to buy a pile of bricks.

My firm relocated to Bristol in 1975 I moved down to the West Country with them. Although briefly working in the pensions department I was allowed to transfer into IT as part of the first phase. For nearly 30 years I worked on and around mainframe computers; initially Scheduling, then Operations and latterly Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery and, yes, Systems Analysis!

I had started fishing when I was 12 but it was pretty dire in East London, yanking tiny fish out from between push-bikes and shopping trolleys.  On the first day I went fishing on the river Avon above Bath a kingfisher landed on the end of my rod. We sat there looking at each other for about ten minutes, till it got bored and flew off. The next day I went out and bought a camera.

There were no courses in photography in those days so I joined the local camera club; Keynsham Photographic Society. I thought I would learn all about photography in two weeks and then go back to fishing – I’d seen owls, badgers, foxes, herons, moles and wild mink; including catching some of the biggest fish I had ever seen.

The first six weeks at the club were all slide orientated – 35mm colour transparencies. Either a ‘slide battle’ with another club, a touring lecture or an audio-visual sequence; so I bought slide film. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, personally that was the best start I could have had. I quickly discovered the exposure had to be right; probably two thirds of each film were either over or under-exposed; and the composition had to be tight – I hated having to physically mask or crop slides.

It occurred to me that if I put in a bit of effort – walked forward, lay down or climbed up on something – I could get the image right before I pressed the button. And if most of my shots were effectively wasted due to wrong exposure I may as well use the film constructively and find out how the meter in my camera worked. It rarely agreed with what I was looking at, in much the same way that my arm rarely agreed with my eyes when I played darts or snooker!

Ian Snaden gave me a roll of black & white film, showed me how to develop and print it, and I was hooked. After setting up a darkroom in the loft so I could do-it-myself, I got a Saturday job in Jessops, up Whiteladies Road in Clifton, Bristol, so I could pay for film and paper. I didn’t see why my kids should go without shoes and food just because I wanted to take up photography.

Working in the camera shop gave me access to all the second-hand stuff. We didn’t open on Sundays, so as long as I got the kit back for Monday morning I could borrow whatever I liked. It wasn’t long before I moved up to medium format – Bronicas and Hasselblads – and eventually to large format 5×4 sheet film.

Conformity and Expectation: Naivety of a budding artist – Part 3

We sometimes went to stay with my cousins in Dublin. This meant catching the boat-train from Euston to Holyhead. It was tremendous. Hurrying along the platforms at 11 O’clock at night!

I loved the noise and the smell of hot oil, burning coal,  leather trunks, and several other things I could never put my finger on. All steam and smoke and atmosphere.

The trains were huge, and the roof was even higher; like a cathedral.

Joe Tymkow - 'Fairy Cathedral'

When we got to Holyhead we had to walk across a gangplank to get on the ferry. When I looked over the side I could see the dark black water a long, long way down; mesmerising and terrifying at the same time.

The crossing seemed to take all night. Mum would produce bowls, milk and cornflakes from nowhere. We would go up on deck and look for light-houses and listen to the sea-gulls following behind. It was always pitch-black, and windy.

In the morning we could see the land, it was Ireland! Another country, so exciting. And when we got to Dublin it was such a curious place. Just the same as London, but completely different. Strange accents, and funny money, and full of people living their lives.

My uncle Terry let me drive his car on the beach near Howth, well steer it anyway. My granddad fixed ambulances in his garage. He let me go down into the inspection-pit and look up underneath to see all the pipes and wires.

One day we walked along the Grand Canal. The water was crystal clear. There was a huge shoal of fish with golden scales and bright red fins; a bit like Roach but more coloured-in. Someone told me they were Rudd.

I never remember coming home.

I failed the eleven plus so I never went to glamour school. Someone built a new Comprehensive, right next to West Ham football ground. We were the first wave and the teachers could try things out on us. What a wonderful opportunity to be part of a social experiment.

West Ham won the World Cup in 1966, (Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters and Bobby Moore), and we were right next door.

It was a brand new school, they were still finishing it when we moved in. There was a play-ground, but no fences had been put up. Because we smashed five windows in the first week the headmaster banned all ball-games indefinitely, so we never played cricket, football, rugby, tennis; I might have been good at something but I never got the chance to find out.

Everything seemed to be made of plastic.

Conformity and Expectation: Naivety of a budding artist – Part 2

When I was 12 everything was fascinating. I loved television, Science, Natural History, Marvel comics; I got a Saturday job with the milkman, and brought frogs, newts and toads into school for miss. One day I caught a rat; she must have been so pleased?

Sometimes we went to Southend and watched men fishing off the end of the pier. Once we filled a bucket with mussels and dad fried them in butter.

When we stayed with Joyce and Sid in Eastbourne we went to Beachy Head and picked up smooth round nodules of chalk. Mum let me take my first pictures on her Kodak Instamatic camera.

It had been raining overnight. The fields were full of tiny snails with brightly coloured shells. I collected a bucket-full and put them in the boot of Sid’s car. When we got back to their house the bucket was empty; I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t understand why the pictures I took on mum’s camera didn’t look like the ones in her mail-order catalogue. I remember seeing a picture of some casserole dishes; superb quality and rich colours. My photos were pathetic by comparison. I assumed you had to be a millionaire, or a genius, or both, and shelved the idea of photography.

My mate Geoff borrowed some fishing gear and we went to try it out at a lake in Snaresbrook. Many people find fishing boring. I suppose its like anything you do for the first time, it depends on your initial introduction/experience. We caught 64 perch, averaging 4 – 6 ounces, the biggest was 2.5 lbs (1.1 kilos). What I couldn’t get over was their strength! How could a little fish pull so hard, with nothing to push against?

Gradually I learned that changing baits/presentation produced different types of fish. I started catching bream, roach, tench and carp. It was the sense of increasing anticipation that was so exciting. Watching tiny pin-prick bubbles edging nearer and nearer to my float, only to drift past again; not knowing what was under the surface or how it was going to react when we made contact. Dad made me a wicker basket so I had something to carry my gear in, and something to sit on when I got there. Mum bought me a fishing-rod from a second-hand shop in Romford Road.

We went fishing religiously every Sunday. We lost track of the time in the Summer; none of us had a watch and it stayed light for so long. We just fished till we couldn’t see any more.

The world was full of pop stars and celebrities. Girls screamed at the Beatles and artists seemed to be duplicating what we saw every day – tins of soup and comics.

Conformity and Expectation: Naivety of a budding artist – Part 1

Visual Awareness

My earliest recollection is that of standing in my cot. I was two years old, wearing a light-blue romper-suit, holding onto the vertical bars with my head pressed into the gap. The cot was the same colour as me, and there were transfers of yellow bears on the headboard. It was very quiet, and quite dim, so it must have been early. Two mice were chewing at a hole in the middle of the flat, thread-bear carpet. They darted away in opposite directions and tentatively came back again…

…my dad was going to work. We had boiled eggs and listened to Edmundo Ross on the radio.

We lived upstairs in my uncle’s house in Forest Gate, East London. There was lino on the floor in the kitchen and I played with wooden pegs under the table, making fields and pens for plastic animals.

My dad was a basket-maker. On Fridays he gave me a tube of smarties.  He showed me that there was a letter inside the cap, and how to pop the lid off when you smash the tube with your fist. He brought home big sheets of paper for me to draw on that he got from the chip-shop. I drew a lot – not random scribbling – pictures with trees and houses and hill-sides and the sun. One day on a train a nun saw me drawing and told my mum I should be encouraged.

Mum took me to London when I was three, on the number 25 bus to Victoria. We sat on top, up the front. We went under a railway-bridge with an advert for Ferodo tyres written right across it in big letters. I couldn’t understand how the bridge stayed up, ‘why doesn’t it fall down on top of us?’ We went to the Natural History Museum. A lady was sitting on the floor and drawing a tiger.

I was born in 1953, eight years after the War. My sister Wanda was born when I was three and I started school when I was five. Dad showed me his stamp collection. He sent coffee and nylons to a dealer in Warsaw and in return got Polish stamps – amazingly varied and colourful, not like our boring British ones.

Everyone had a horse and cart, the milkman, the coalman, the rag-and-bone man. They all called me John, ‘Alright John?’ Men came on a steam-roller to fix the road – Light-coloured chippings and hot black tar. My cousins and I used the tar to glue lolly-sticks together and we threw them around like boomerangs.

When I was six I got meningitis. It was a Friday. On the way into school we had gone past a toy-shop. There was a big red racing-car in the window, but when I asked if I could have it mum said it was far too expensive. By the time I got home from school I was really hot, started throwing-up and got progressively worse. I remember lying down, and then two men in white coats were pushing me along a corridor. There were strip-lights passing overhead and we went into a lift. At some stage I heard my mum saying ‘please speak to me and I’ll buy you that red car’…

…the next thing I remember is being up on the ceiling in the corner of a room with lots of beds in it. I was looking down at myself lying in the middle bed and was surprised at how small I was. Obviously I had no control over my movements otherwise I would have gone and had a good look round…

…my cousin Mick woke me up. He said it was Tuesday! I couldn’t believe I had lost three days, what had I been doing, thinking, dreaming about? How had the world moved on without me knowing about it? Mum and dad came in and I said ‘where’s my car?’ They both started crying. I spent two weeks at a convalescent home in Shoeburyness. (I didn’t draw again till I was forced to at secondary school).

Dad made me a wooden fort and a dolls-house for Wanda. He was always making wicker furniture. There were coils of rattan soaking in the bath and he bent bamboo canes over the gas.

My brother Robert was born when I was seven and the council moved us to a converted shop in Walton Road, Manor Park. It had a big picture window, the whole width of the front room and from floor to ceiling. Dad built a partition wall so we had a hallway, and there was a tin bath hanging up outside the back door. There was a walk-in pantry with grass growing on the roof. It used to be a bomb-shelter. Mum got a washing machine, a sort of boiler with a ringer on top. We played out in the street; cars only came down our road if they were lost.

Dad made me a bike from spare parts and taught me to ride it. He got an allotment near the river Roding and I went with him occasionally. We saw barn owls, kingfishers, grass snakes and water voles. One day hundreds of tiny fish jumped out onto the bank! Dad said a pike was probably chasing them. We went to Wanstead Park and watched men fishing.

In the winter we had a paraffin heater on the landing. Wanda and I used to creep quietly up the stairs. When we got level with the top floor we could sometimes see mice sitting under the heater. They rushed away when we started laughing.

There were some bombed-out houses a few streets away where we used to play and investigate. One house had the same lino as us on the floor!

We got a black and white telly when I was nine. It was built into a wooden cabinet and had a nine-inch screen. Everyone smoked, wore hats and the whole world was in black and white. My dad smoked a pipe, Gold Block, it smelled lovely and the smoke lit up white as it drifted past a shaft of light.

Our little brother Stephen was born when I was ten. The council gave us a ground-floor flat in a new estate on the other side of Manor Park; that was nice of them, presumably someone won an award? I didn’t realise we were poor till I started secondary school.