Fox and Angel, Creative Partnership

Goodbye Cuckoo, Hello Badger

May 12th, 2009

It is April 24th and I have still not heard a cuckoo in my garden. They are elsewhere in Sussex but not here in this valley. They were calling the day my daughter was born in 1992 but now she is revising for A Levels they are gone.  Read the rest of this entry »

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NATURE NOTES

April 20th, 2009

Something wonderful has happened on the Uckfield line!! Some amazing person or persons has planted daffodils in the cutting just before you arrive at East Croydon. As the train roars into the station you see a flash of yellow light, and then a host of golden daffodils. It is enough to restore your faith in humanity. Praise be and halleluiah to those people. Read the rest of this entry »

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a true story

March 27th, 2009

It was Hazel who said we needed real stuffed foxes. Of course we did. “We stop at nothing to get a good photo”, she said. Right. Absolutely. (O.K. it was she who found the hire place but somehow it was me who pulled the short straw re picking them up).

One hot sunny day, (almost the only such last year) I set off to Islington from Sussex. Yes, a bit of a hike but we couldn’t find foxes in Sussex so off I go.

It was very relaxing on the train; all the rubbish on the track was temporarily covered by brambles and bluebells; the train seemed to meander like a river, a lazy day lost in time.

I cross London and tramp past the Angel, (note Angel that’s us) up the Essex Road, which hasn’t changed at all since I worked in North London, you need to watch out for yourself as well as hang on to your bag.

Not that easy when you are carrying two stuffed foxes, as I soon discovered.

The hire shop was on a corner. Entry was via a couple of metal grids and very rusty giant padlocks. Inside there were all sorts of animals waiting to be borrowed; lions, tigers, poor moggys, parrots; it was a veritable cornucopia of dead and stuffed creatures. I decided not to hang about. There was no entry system; you had to hammer and wave and basically look pretty stupid.

Not as stupid as you do carrying the foxes though. I stood on the street corner trying to hail a taxi, holding one fox by the scruff and awkwardly hefting the other over my shoulder. The foxes had been handed to me in what can only be described as bits of black bags, so they were scantily clad and barely disguised; in fact not.

I did get a cab although the driver didn’t like the look of me at all and particularly not my cargo, but what did he expect on the Essex Road? Surely London taxi drivers have seen dead foxes before? What do they do The Knowledge for, if it is not to prepare them for this? There was no need for him to be quite so squeamish; after all I hadn’t murdered them myself. Still, I know he was glad to see the back of me, (he made this very plain), as I stumbled out at London Bridge.

On the train it got worse. I sat in the suitcase area so the foxes didn’t get squashed or damaged; (they had to be returned in perfect condition and I wasn’t about to argue on this point with medallion man the Islington dealer). Still I caused a bit of a fracas. Teenage girls saw the dead foxes and screamed, middle-aged ladies asked if I was part of a hunt and a bevy of nuns came to take a closer look, peering and chortling ho ho ho.

I was very glad to get home.

You might not know this but stuffed foxes are in great demand and expensive to hire. We had to crack on straight away with our film; to take these foxes back late would be a lot worse financially than an overdue library book.

So it was a case of film, camera, shoot. Our, (we felt they were “ours”), foxes came everywhere with us; in and out of the landrover, in and out of our office, in and out the hire shop, on location in gardens, fields and hedgerows, up stairs and up ladders, up up up…….culminating in our great finale on the roof of The Old Fox House. (Of course).

We and they were non-stop for two days before they had to go back to town.

The funny thing was I drew the short straw for the return journey back to the Angel. Yes Hazel, “we” will do anything to get a good shot.

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A FREE MAKE-OVER

March 23rd, 2009

On the way to the bookshop to pick up career books for my sixteen year old daughter so she does not always live at home eating ice-cream in her dressing gown and watching Channel Dave I pass the Bobbie Brown counter.

Accidentally, well sort of accidentally. In fact I deviate pass this counter quite often. Sometimes I hover about for a few minutes, sometimes I stop and look, and sometimes I hurry away. But mostly I just take comfort that it is there.
But today I march right up to it and gaze at the lovely earth-coloured eye shadows. “Can I help you?” says a pretty young girl with glowing skin. “Oh no, just looking” I say and I do a sort of side-step. But suddenly I become very bold. I blurt it out. Rather in the manner I once told my GP I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.

“Yes, I do need help….a lot of it” and I explain about my discontinued Clarins lip colour, how I feel I am becoming obsolete myself and there must be some blusher, [medication?] something that will do the trick. Ten Years Younger? I never watch the programme as a matter of principle, but somehow it has got into my synapses.

“Would you like to make an appointment for a free make-over?” “No….Yes, well how about today?” Can you do me NOW?” I feel if I don’t settle it this minute the moment will pass never to be retrieved. So suddenly she and Bobbie’s other girls have no chance, they are stuck with me. They make pretence of looking in their book, hoping it is full, but it is as clear as day that they had no customers this afternoon. There had been a power cut in the shopping centre for a start and everyone has gone home. One of them was going to have to step up to the plate for this Nicky Hambleden-Jones wanabee.

The other girl suddenly found another customer so the first girl, who was in fact brave and sweet showed me to the stool as if she were a dental assistant ushering a nervous patient. I felt a bit like a contestant on The Weakest Link, (I make a point of not watching that either); the one who was going to be voted off first.

The first question stumped me. “Have you any idea of the look you want?” I went blank. (I was the weakest link). I wanted to say I want to be like you, (she was 20…maybe 21 with flawless olive skin & smoky eye-shadow) but I could see that this was an expectation too far even for Nicky herself. (Apparently she has been replaced on her own programme for being too old, which although of course I never watch this programme still seems totally unfair). As it was, if I’d been setting out for a make-over and pre-booked my appointment I’d have worn my Joseph jacket not my Peruvian cardigan, [this principle is important when you visit the hairdresser nobody wants the knitted jacket type hair cut] but too late; however I managed to say, (quite intelligently I thought) that I wanted her help to look as good as I could for my age.

She started off with “Bobbie’s favourite product”. Out came pots of lovely goo, like oil paints, such divine creamy colours. I tried to ask one or two sensible questions [as if I had free makeovers as a matter of course] and was told I could look in the mirror whenever I liked. Which I didn’t like. This meant finding my glasses and getting in and out of the hot seat. And besides I try not to look at myself in my glasses. What would be the point? The top buzz-word these days seems to be “low self-esteem”, so why encourage more of it?

Actually without the glasses I was quite pleased with the effect. She said I didn’t have dark patches under my eyes, (what she meant was like some women of your age) which cheered me a lot. She seemed confident that she was making me look better and kept referring to my new glow.

So on went concealer, foundation, powders and lipstick; “old rose” was the lip colour she thought suited me when normally I go for rust or orange; I haven’t used old rose since I was trying to be Jean Shrimpton, stealing my mother’s lipstick from her hand-bag.

The sixties no-make-up-look had obviously come round again, especially when she applied kohl to my eyes and I started to look like Dusty Springfield [not that my ingénue make-up girl would have had a clue who she was].

The high stool became rather uncomfortable after a while but I persevered. In fact the make-up all seemed to feel very nice, especially as the girl told me it was Bobbie’s favourite look etc. etc. I was beginning to fall for the patter hook line and sinker. She asked me if I needed it done for a special occasion and I racked my brains and thought of my step-daughter’s wedding in June which I then brought forward a few months, aware that it is usually the bride who has a make-up practise and not the step-mother witness.
So all too soon it was over. She asked me if I wanted to buy the products. Well of course I wanted to buy the products!! I had to jump now I’d got this far. What was the point of looking ten years younger and having Bobbie’s glow just for five minutes when the whole effect could last a lifetime?!!

Tags: A FREE MAKE-OVER
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JULIE MYERSON

March 20th, 2009

As featured in The Independent, March 2009

Because we are writing a book on teenagers we have taken a great interest in the “Julie Myerson case”.

This is a strange situation for the author to find herself; the oxygen of publicity surrounding her novel suffocating and strangling her family. Was it intended or did it all get out of hand? Is “The Lost Child” a (de facto) bestseller but with too high a price?

A writer should not be blamed for fictionalising her story, however lightly; although I think what is critical in this case is the timing. It would have been wiser for her to have recorded her experience and her agony but then sat on the material for several years before turning it into a book.

Nineteen year old boys are un-worked clay. They are forever testing the water, getting into scrapes, over-reaching themselves, causing havoc; in other words working out their own value systems and learning by mistakes and losses, just as we all did.

Teenagers hate to be corralled or manipulated. (Witness Bristol Palin’s nineteen year old boyfriend who has just done a bunk). They see straight through therapy-speak. In these situations they just look for the exit, in some way or another.

It is too early to tell how things will turn out. What is almost a dead cert is that during his twenties Jake will have more adventures and some of these will turn out to be good.

What Julie has done by creating infamy around her son has made it impossible for him to creep back under cover of darkness without loss of face.

By going public so soon she has created a fissure unlikely to heal.

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MAKE DO & MEND

March 5th, 2009

Nobody will believe us but Fox & Angel came up with the slogan MAKE DO & MEND long before anyone else; before the crash, the crunch and the squeeze.

 

Of course we know it is not new. I first saw this slogan at Art School when I was writing a dissertation on art in World War Two. And in any case the concept was in my blood; my grandmother had been a dressmaker; I used her rag bag to dress my dolls, and I made all my own clothes (and I mean all) for a decade from the age of fifteen. Such productivity ended the year I cut out costumes for the entire cast of the “The Gondoliers”; I realised I had out-sown my strength.

Unfortunately since sewing is no longer taught in schools I am wondering how the mend part of make-do is actually going to work?

Art students are great at creating looks and know the way of mixing a jumble sale fifties skirt with a pair of up to the minute shoes but I don’t see this flair in my local high street.

Down here in Sussex all you see is ghastly trainers and track pants; if you suggest to people that they go more colourful red track pants will be it. Florida seems to have come to the UK but in grey or mushroom, (although admittedly this is better than turquoise). Even if it’s called taupe or charcoal it’s still beige or grey. The worst thing is the contagion; I have found myself shopping in old sweat pants “because it’s only local”, what the hell, no one will see me. It is said that women express themselves in clothes. Well, not here they don’t. Or only as a long running tragi-comedy.

And what applies to the people is even truer of the buildings. I hate to think what effect make-do will have on the buildings. It seemed to be the mantra even before the down-turn. We are no longer a visual nation. Our medieval buildings were beautiful, our Georgian cities were striking, there is majesty in our great Victorian town halls but since then it has been all down-hill. I don’t want to necessarily embrace the “Neo” look…. (Poundbury etc.) but something has badly gone wrong. Even our great new architectural projects lack the vision and bravery which is so obvious in Paris, Berlin and New York.

We major in dull as ditchwater, (which happens to be the colour of the river that flows through my nearby town). Our streets are grubby, we look lumpen and as a nation we are ashamed.

Even in the good times the only “improvements” were dodgy replacement windows. The flat roofs remain; so do the run down thirties tudoresque, and all manner of fill-in badly-proportioned buildings. And if we do try to up-grade our town centres they are bulldozed and with the wave of a counsellor’s wand magic-ed into fairy castle supermarket architecture. The first one must have been “designed” but the rest were plonked down just about anywhere.

England is supposedly a country with strict planning laws. Not where big business is concerned it isn’t; not that you can see anyway. A new development means a large bulldozer and a rolling out of wall to wall concrete. Conservation is a lip-service word usually applied to a flower bed full of wood chippings and dried out plants. Sometimes bald patches of barren, neglected land scattered with litter, are brazenly sign-posted “conservation areas”.

To compound the problem most builders themselves seem to be completely non-visual; aesthetics obviously isn’t taught at construction college. Leave the average painter and decorator unsupervised for five minutes and your apple-white will have turned into magnolia because they had a tin left in the van. It’s all the same to them. This is the supreme danger of “make-do & mend”. It won’t be colourful, quirky and charming; it will be magnolia.

This lack of upkeep, not to mention the look of the thing, is no more obvious than in our railways. I made a journey to London last week on our local line. The ticket office was unmanned, the train seats were filthy, the one loo that was working had no paper and the rail cutting was swathed with litter and detritus. Where attempts had been made to paint or fill cracks it looked as if it been bodged by a load of amateurs; gimcrack and cheapskate.

We don’t do big projects well (remember the Dome and the Tunnel) but we do small ones even worse.

There needs to be a sea-change; we should have ambition and want to see beauty again in our streets as well as our countryside. We need more green spaces, clean pavements, flowers and plants and that old-fashioned thing civic pride. It is something of an irony that it is Bill Bryson, an American by birth, who can see Great Britain more clearly than we see ourselves, who is trying, (without much success it has to be said with this intransigent, stubborn nation; our stoicism undoubtedly works against us in peacetime) to spearhead a “Clean-Up Britain” campaign.

What England needs during the next decade is nothing dramatic. Maybe we should even put vision and beauty, (too highfalutin?) on hold for the future? Perhaps this is a mind-set and expectation too far just now. Perhaps better to aim for a lick of paint and a general clean up. During recession, we are sure to have the surplus man-power. Is this kind of “make-do & mend” really so much to ask?

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WORRIES ABOUT THE POSTAL SERVICE

March 5th, 2009

At Fox & Angel we are worried about the postal service. Will Peter Mandelson’s sell-off improve delivery here?

Although we are fortunate to have a jolly postman (with very sturdy legs who always wears shorts), during February a number of important letters have failed to arrive. Nothing on Valentine’s day (no love letters at all in fact), nothing from Working Title to say they adored our screen-play, (perhaps due to the crisis they never even received it?), no six-figure book deal from the poshest agent in London, nothing from the Green Party to whom we offered our services practically free because the Tories were short-sighted enough to turn us down and nothing from HSBC to say that their shares have doubled allowing us enough money to buy a state of the art Apple Mac.

The whole thing has been completely mystifying; we can only hope with part-privatisation things will dramatically get better.

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RISK ASSESSMENT

March 2nd, 2009

In the news last week there was a nuclear submarine collision and cover-up, another Madoff-type scam in Antigua, (run on bank, man goes missing), and a helicopter crash in the North Sea in which the pilot seemed to think he had landed on the rig but found himself in the water.

These men are let loose around the globe but here in Sussex classroom assistants cannot put pictures up on the walls of their classrooms unless they have undergone “ladder-training”.

Question: would the world be in a better or worse mess if nursery nurses (standing on tables with the intention of using blu-tack) were running the whole show?

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IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO FOR YOU?

February 10th, 2009

In a high street near me there are a number of banks. The first one calls itself a bank, although it used to be a building society, however I once heard a cross customer say it couldn’t call itself a bank if it was “too small to handle coins” and “didn’t do foreign currency”. As it happens I once asked for some 50ps for parking at this bank and they tried to oblige but the place where the coins were kept was too small to get at and the cashier got his hand stuck, (in the till so to speak).

In my view this branch of this “not quite a bank” bank has other flaws. The code of conduct which must be taught at the School for Banks is very well practised here. It is the art of not catching the customer’s eye when having a nice chat and tantalisingly and deliberately never opening another till even when a child is screaming and all the old people have collapsed.

Like the cross man at the first “bank” I myself have had run-ins and small adventures at other banks in the town. The next bank was also once a building society but is now a “bank”. Surprisingly as it has no money and has been sold on several times until it hardly knows who owns it itself, it also always has a long queue.

The staff here have cleverly mastered at least page one of the personnel manual which states “All self-respecting employees go for coffee at 11am when it starts to get busy” and “staff-training is whenever we feel like it, sometimes on a Wednesday first-thing but not always”.

Before the recent banking mayhem this bank was re-fitted, (to increase the number of tellers you might think, but no), a large glass box was set-up in which you may be asked to sit [presumably under controlled conditions] to be told how to look after your finances, at a pre-arranged time, (ideally not 11am) should you still trust anyone in banking to be of assistance that is.

I recently attempted to pay in six cheques at this branch all at one go, and was frowned upon as apparently paying money in slows things up. I was informed that if this were to happen again I must write the sort code on the back of each cheque as it would “save me time”. I was also directed to the Quick 3-Step Pay-in System which I pointed out was not quick, writing on the back of my cheques would save the bank time but not me and I wasn’t in any case just paying in. On this occasion I wasn’t asked if there was anything else that could be done for me as already they felt they had done far too much. And I hadn’t even sat in the box. I am not popular at this branch.

Opposite this “bank” there is a real bank, in the sense that it hasn’t changed its name or logo, if that means anything; it might or not. It also has a quick-pay-in-system but one operated by a person and is clearly signed. To stretch her legs from time to time, and because she has few takers this person bobs along the line asking people if they are just paying in, in case they hadn’t seen the notice. This is usually done with extreme largesse, (also taught at the School for Banks), as if she were granting each and every customer a special favour and temporarily suspending all other important work in order to especially attend to their very own needs, but just this once mind. Or in case there is a simpleton in the queue.

You can also open new accounts at this desk when she is sitting not bobbing but not in your maiden name, even with birth, marriage, decrees nisi, utility bills, passports in fact all singing & dancing documentation, even though you have banked with this bank for 40 years, twenty five of which were actually in your maiden name. Money laundering you see. Let divorced women like me in and the floodgates will open.

Presumably because it is not keen to open new accounts to once-married women who are wanting to be themselves again this bank is trying to attract customers in other ways; by opening on Saturdays for instance, (an astonishing new idea, whatever happened to “Keep Saturday Sacred?”) and by allowing you to talk with a real local person instead of a star button in a foreign country.

My son has had dealings with yet another “bank”. This time a building society which doesn’t seem to pretend to be anything other than what it is, although it has the same convoluted rules and regulations. Wishing to withdraw money shortly after his 18th birthday he found his child account was blocked although he hadn’t yet received his new “grown-up” account card. And even with his old “child” card, his account number, his passport, his driving licence, (no cesspit emptying bill as he still lives at home……..would this have clinched it?) they simply wouldn’t budge. Normally when teenagers stand in banks with mothers making a fuss, they cringe, disassociate themselves and drag you away but he stood firm as even he could see how totally ludicrous this was. On Crimewatch you just don’t see teenage robbers demanding money with menaces brandishing passports & driving licenses accompanied by harassed middle-aged women.

Anyway, to return to the first point. Come to think of it I have never heard anyone answer YES to the “anything else I can do for you?” question. So I wonder what on earth else they do do? I think I have always assumed this pleasantry to be the British equivalent of the American “have a nice day” or a kind of auto-speak like “please enter your pin” and best quietly ignored. Perhaps they give you leaflets rather than just hope you will pick one up………that could be it; banks always have a lot of spare leaflets, although obviously no spare money.

I did once ask at the bank with the new glass box whether they did travel insurance and the girl gave me a leaflet. When I said this didn’t seem to help she suggested the travel agent opposite. I then tried the travel agent but they are only allowed to sell you insurance if you’ve booked a holiday with them, (money-laundering/equal opportunities/freedom of information/human rights/ the whole shebang?) but what this clever girl did was direct me back across the street to a place where miraculously I got cash, euros and travel insurance all in one wonderful fell swoop.

This was a proper bank at last. And in a high street near me. And one which, for my money, unlike all the other “banks” deserves propping up and special treatment.

And that also gave the correct answer to the original question. It is obviously not a polite “No thank you” but “Can you direct me to the Post Office?”

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A BITTER CHILL

January 17th, 2009

The danger in writing a blog of any description is the possible horror of simply adding to the junk silting up the internet. So we have vowed to keep it short.

At Fox and Angel we began our speculative political campaign because in some perhaps naïve and desperate way, (although the desperation came from what we saw in the world around us, not our individual psyches), we felt we wanted to do something with our talent, as well as paying our mortgages, to try to help make the country better.

We began with a campaign for the Conservative Party because we thought it was pretty obvious at the time that they would be the next party in power. This is not as obvious as it once was, although perhaps they will now need us more rather than less.

We wrote to David Cameron who seemed interested and passed us on to someone who did not want to see us, in fact ignored our phone calls and e-mails. We had a meeting with Theresa May, we hoped in connection with her campaign “Women to Win” but she said she had enough women, thank you very much.

We contacted Boris Johnson who passed us down the line to someone else, and this someone sent us reams of forms to fill in, the subtext being “DON’T BOTHER US “We are an equal opportunities employer, BUT THIS DOESN’T MEAN YOU”.

We are sending again to Boris as we think he may not know, (along with Dave Cameron) that the small innovative enterprises that he trumpets about so much are being fobbed off. We shall enclose a copy of “Who Moved My Blackberry” by Lucy Kellaway which is a terrific novel-as-treatise on corporate bullshit.

Anyway it is January 2009. The world has been taken over and overtaken by financial calamity which affects every human soul.

So how was it this crisis, (and it is such a HUGE crisis that world leaders have been effectively silenced), came about exactly?

Well, it seems that a lot of risk-taking men took risks that made a lot of easy money and then a lot of more sensible men were told by their bosses that they were under-performing if they did not do the same so they were dragged into it too and they found that despite their reservations they were getting away with it, although they wondered how long it could go on, (but not for long enough to stop doing it of course) and anyway there seemed no end to it, they were keeping all the balls in the air by lending to each other so everything was up, up, up.

Although the men didn’t really know who the people were lending to that they were lending to but this didn’t seem to matter, (and in any case it had got a darn sight too complicated to actually fathom), and it was obviously working so why worry, their own contracts were pretty water-tight and even if it went a bit wrong, or possibly badly wrong they knew their personal money was guaranteed and since everybody was doing it there was safety in numbers and no one person could be blamed.

Even when one or two of these men saw that it was getting a bit hard to actually see how it worked even for those who were in the thick of it, in fact especially for those, (there was a “wood for the trees” aspect in all this) the accountants seemed to know what they were doing, (that is what experts like that are for to make sure nothing goes wrong) and the auditors gave it the nod too because the checks and balances put in by governments kept everything above board and if huge companies used a one man book-keeper from down the street that was prudent good-housekeeping and just keeping over-heads down.

And everything was just hunky-dory until some people in America, (although it could have been anywhere), started to default on their loans, and men seeing their debts were being dishonoured by people who had never had any money or any likelihood of money in the first place and shouldn’t have been lent any, let alone what they couldn’t afford, started pulling their money out, right, left and centre. Without warning.

And because we have gone global and global is good the disaster began to travel right around the world unfolding and unravelling gaining momentum as it went. Here in England there was a run on a bank called Northern Rock which had such a solid sounding name but turned out to be built upon sand and people were queuing right around the street to get their money out.

Now many people have no houses, no jobs, and no security but have been told to go out shopping and then everything will be all right, or it might be, because Gordon Brown says so.

Although if you had ever read a political memoir like “Cold Cream” by Ferdinand Mount who worked for Mrs Thatcher, or “Downing Street Diary” by Bernard Donoughue who worked for Harold Wilson you might have already concluded that Parliament, is all about theatre, posturing, infighting and muddle.

Except that if the men in charge actually went to the theatre or read literature they would know to look out for these kind of scams and with some intelligent reasoning could have even averted the whole crisis. “The Voysey Inheritance” written by Harley Granvile Barker was first staged in 1906 (and recently by the National Theatre) yet describes the Madoff scandal of 2009. “The Way We Live Now” written by Anthony Trollope with a similar theme but of earlier vintage was even recently on T.V.

History, even on T.V. is not quite all bunk then?

Or is it just life imitating art?

It was Linda Davies (a former investment banker turned novelist) who wrote “Surely the lawmakers can do something? They have tried but the creativity of the fraudulent and the sheer enormity of their incentives will always be greater than that of the lawmakers. Constructing fences is much duller than leaping them”.

Indeed. And that is the million dollar answer.

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