Tuesday 15th November

Last night I finished work and returned home, dug out my trainers and jogging gear then looked at them as they lay on the floor. I slumped onto the bed stayed there in thought for several minutes then went down stairs. I am ashamed to say I watched the beginning of “I’m a Celebrity” before going to bed. I managed to ignore the impulse to buy some beers.

It was raining in the morning so I drove in to school. I started work on the baseball bats as well as burning copies of films I had made and borrowed. The film I had borrowed was from a friend of my fathers from Amsterdam. Back in the 80s he had made a film about the squatter’s movement in Amsterdam and its fight against the government. The same guy had looked after my father for several weeks in 1984 when he had stayed there as a representative of the N.UM. Several weeks before my father’s visit, I too had been their guest. The baseball bats in that way were connected to the film. I had remembered the scene of the baseball bats lining the corridor of a squatters bar, all racked neatly one after another, each accompanied by a gas mask. Over those weeks I travelled on a Dutch barge around Holland using Amsterdam as a base. I experienced many new things and most importantly I experienced another way of living. We held up supermarkets, jumped trams, frequented illegal bars and visited galleries. I was only 8 but I was given the job of running the bar on the barge and some mornings, when I was up before everyone else (as 8 year olds always are). I would steer the boat whilst the guy usually doing this (a Yule Brenna look a like dressed only in Y fronts and wellies), would fill his pipe and watch.

Much of my political opinion is formed from my experiences that year. The illegal arrests, beatings and detentions, the travel restrictions, mail opened phones tapped, houses watched and family's split (no I must have got that wrong, that couldn’t happen here, not here in Britain). It is my political opinions and love of History that form the foundations of my work. The experiences of 1984 taught me a lot about the limitations of the governments power. My social roots were soon forgotten however.

“Just look at those superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it.” (22)

Would have been an accurate description of me in my 20s. It took me years to realise once more that

“Truly he who possesses little is so much less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty.”(23)

Bullshit! Being broke is no joke. I can however recommend a bit of hunger to anyone who is finding life unfulfilling, lacking stimulus or just struggling to motivate themselves.

“Ill gotten wealth ensures the soul consumes the blood” (24)

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(22) Fredrich Nietzsche “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” pp 77 Paragraph 3 (23) pp 77 paragraph 7 (24) Goethe’s “Faust” pp 110. Faust talks to Mephistopheles.