How did I get here? - part 5

After all that travelling, my girlfreind of the time, Julia, went to do post graduate studies. She was posh but not particularly bright, I began to see the swizz. Us from poor disfunctional families and broken homes had to catch up with the rich kids who had all the know how. I'm not talking real posh like Camebridge, Oxford; public school but middle class normal middle Englanders. We just hadn't a clue, most were doomed before they even got to toddle to remaining in their socio economic groups. The game was rigged. We split up shortly ater;  playing out with the bad boys was over, time to find a provider, a husband.
By this time I'd never met a public schoolboy, posh meant being able to afford a car, a phone. During my childhood, the powercuts just continued as my dad couldn't pay the bills. Many months would be spent cooking on a fire. Since my mothers death we ran wild, feral youth with no support nor walls to hold us. I could stay away for days. I rarely saw my dad, if I did he was pissed. The house never got cleaned after the death of my mother, I was 12, windows we smashed remained broken, curtains we ripped hung in shreds. We would pinch my dads air rifle and shoot little tins of humbrol paint making Pollock splatters on the walls, food would decay on plates under our beds, forgotten amongst layers of comics and broken remnants of a family home. How could I do homework with no light. The streets were my living room, magic mushrooms my central heating.
I moved with her to Birmingham where she studied some socialogical bullshit and I found work in a pine furniture factory. Divorced, somewhat, from my peers, I struggled. She got a job as a housing officer, even the benevolent seem patronising.
I applied for Shrewsbury College on Mark from my Irish adventures advice. No qualifications and still with Northern accent in days before the fall of Thatcher and the later embracing of Northern culture. Even if successful, we were clowns; Eddy Warings. If only people would study just what Eddy had achieved as a younger man perhaps they would see that even our sport, Rugby League was outlaw, anti establishment. The history of the two sports is a metaphor for the prejudice that went on till Union finally owned up and went professional and stopped their shamiteurism.
Now things are different, Northern intelligence has made its' mark. BBC presenters like Mark Ratcliffe and Stuart Maconey, comedians like Peter Kay, poets like Simon Armitage have broken the glass wall in to the mainstream. The feeling of the North is akin to the British feeling towards the Americans, they dominate yet we see their clumsiness and arrogance. Even Paul Wellers' class war song Eton Rifles was written on a mistake. The Jam were playing Leeds, some of them took the piss out of the visitting Australian Rugby League team. The ausy RL boys battered The Jam and their entire crew. Wellers song refers to 'a tie and a crest'. He obviously didn't know he had got the wrong sport and assumed they were upper class Rugby Union players; not what they were, players of the working class sport of Rugby League.
I arrived at the large farmhouse in Cross Houses, 4 miles from Shrewsbury. The course leader was either short on students or, seeing the test piece he sent me away to make realised I had promise. Hugh has grown to know me now; I have been back to lecture at colleges he has been course leader on. Perhaps I am wrong to feel such class prejudice but there are many reasons why a kid might leave school without qualifications; parents dieing or divorcing can ruin a kids education as much, if not more than poverty. When I did try at school, before my mum died, I would feel a failure if I came below second in anything.
Two Pauls moved in with me; the first was a messed up lad from Kent, the second a brummy bear of a lad who had been world power lifting champion. He was no brute though and applied a professional sporting approach to his making. Paul Stevens is one of the best craftsmen I have seen, equalled only by Robert Ingham, Andrew Whatley and David Oldfield. None are household names yet all the equal, if not better than any furniture makers from any era.
We all had pot in common and the disconnection this brings brought out the best in us. The tutoring was excellent in making if not design. Had I not had Paul there in that first year with his incredible skill and none of the class hang ups I carried I would never have become the maker I did. I always felt I had the edge on him in design and this came to the fore when he took an apprenticship at Parnham under John Makepeace. He designed to exersize his skill, not to express other things.
When he left, I was left with a young lad, Andy Vaughn who I teased relentlessly though respected to the max, to compete with. My designing was really my strength.
Other wise I met Tim Dodwell, a public schoolboy of farming stock who helped me realise that there was a difference between a country gent and a gentry cunt. I began to see that birth was chance; it wasn't their fault they were posh no more than it was mine to be poor. Through him, and Hugh Scriven, the working class chip on my shoulders began to rot and fade.
During my holidays I had found work with Brian O'Connell in Thornton who ran a restoration business under Andys' workshop in an old, decrepit mill. I arranged that when I left Shrewsbury, I would work for him one day to pay to rent a room in his house, one day to rent my bench space and three days to do my own stuff. Martin had followed my path and gone to Ryecotewood and jumped in on my connections. He had moved in and was working for Brian before I even got back. His temperament let him down. The first night I got back, I brought my girlfriend Alice to stay. Martin, unsympathetic or empathetic woke us all at 8am, hammering skirtings in. This display of enthusiasm backfired as Brian had stayed up for a welcome drink with us the previous night.
I soon moved upstairs to work in the same space as Andy. With few connections, business was poor. Alice moved up for a while and we moved to Chapel Allerton, north Leeds. I became an avid cyclist, 27 miles to work and back then pleasure rides in the evening. Before nor since have I been so fit. Alice had gone to study art in Cheltenham and once she was at college I would visit most weekends. I became jealous. I should have done art but seeing no career that way I stuck to what I knew and went to study furniture Design and Craftsmanship at High Wycombe under Philip Hussey, one of the most curteous and intelligent men I have ever met.
I moved in with Peter Vincent, a lovely but fragile man and became close freinds with Berin, a hippy 10 years my juniour and Gareth Neal, same age. See, it had taken me ten years to get to the same place as them though my body of experience was far broader.
I feel guilty over Peter who left a schzophrenic wreck. My cannabis use here was huge. After a bout of severe flu I gave up tobacco but would smoke pipes of hash from the moment I woke till I slept. I was however, fully committed to do well and show my strengths. After a few pipes I would arrive at college stoned before anyone else and leave after everyone. In the evenings I would continue to work and smoke pipes. I was visitting Alice at weekends so took onboard all the art of the time too. My work became a blend of the two. Whilst other students made furniture, I made art, disguised as furniture. Our end of the year project was a wall cabinet; I lost 10% of my mark for not attending the crit yet still had the highest mark.
Paul Stevens left Makepeaces and joined the first year as I began the second. His making skills were beyond any of the lecturers though his designs heavily derivative. I fell in to competing with him again and produced two good pieces but they were technical, weak design wise in some ways as they lent toward the organic flavour of the time. They were close but didn't match the pesonal touch of my first year work. The other course members were picking up too. Berin had to drop out for a year as he had over worked and damaged his wrists. I missed his freindship.
Our final year was strange. I began with a full on art piece that got A grades but my two follow ups were compromised. I was trying hard to please the tutors but still dealing with a lot of theory. I had read the books suggested by the Goldsmiths lecturers; I was enamoured by the unfolding YBA scene and convinced I should have done art. My thesis was on my grasp of contemporary art and not great. It pulled my overall grade down till I barely got a first.
Paul had left, Berin was gone. I had no support structure, just the lecturers and Gareth to bounce off. I was glad to leave though happy to have come first with two commendations. These qualifications are of no consequence once you leave. The game is over. You are spat out in to the world to fend for yourself. Once more it returns to connections and location.