THINGS&PEOPLE

ANUBIS & MATT

sandy — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:07:10 +0000

Napoleon gave up the spoils of his failed Egyptian campaign to Nelson. When it set shore in England this ballast of priceless artefacts threw the country into Egypt-mania. This was the England of Herbert Ingram, founder of The Illustrated London News. Half a century later Herbert’s son Walter returned home from Somaliland to a people still in thrall to all things Egyptian. He had found the mummy of Queen Nesmin. Opening the case in the paper’s offices revealed an inscription, ‘May the person who unwraps me die rapidly’. And so he did, trampled to death by a rogue elephant. Walter’s nephew, Bruce took over as Editor of the ILN and, for 7 years, he reported in minute detail Howard Carter’s discovery and excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The apparent ‘curse of the mummy’ lived on and Lord Carnarvon, patron of the expedition, died from blood poisoning. Howard Carter died of natural causes at 64, to the delight of ‘curse’ sceptics. This anubis was a given by Carter to Bruce, who bequeathed it to his nephew Michael, who, in turn, gave it to his grandson Matt. They have all lived curse-free lives, giving weight to the theory that there are as many pyramidiots as there are Egyptologists.

PIANO & JACK

sandy — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:58:14 +0000

The landlord decided to sell up. There was the immediate but short-lived fear that they’d all have to move out, until they realised that they could buy their three floors. The house was never divided up, the middle floor, with it’s pink walls and upright piano, remained a shared space. Jack and Stella hammered away at the keys – a limited repertoire, mostly ‘Chopsticks’ and the piano was never in tune but it provided a focus for the two families to spend time together. In 2010, after 25 years, Jan and Lief decided to move. The piano would have to go. They left a crowbar and a hammer. Dismantling it revealed the wood without its thick layer of lacquer, the insides were still marked with penciled measurements. Jack extracted the teeth, filling a thin plastic bag with the keys. The wooden panels now sit in his new home. He’s making them into a chest for the hallway of his shared flat.

VASE & BETHANY

sandy — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:50:40 +0000

Helen taught herself English. She and Harry had settled in Chicago. Their family history was one bruised by persecution and so they fled their Russian homeland. They had 6 children, 2 sons and 4 daughters. Harry did well in the construction industry and his children wanted for nothing. In the 1920s his daughters Micky and Francis travelled to China, on a particularly glorified ‘shopping trip’. This is where Francis bought the vase. She eyed the antique dealer, carefully hid the base and nonchalantly handed the vase over to him. She’d identified the seal on the base as one issued by the imperial court, it bore a star – marking it out as an object of exceptional value. As a child Bethany had always admired the vase in her grandparent’s house. After Harry died and Helen moved to Arizona the vase went with her. Bethany’s uncle had also admired the vase, ‘Jefferey’ was written on its base marking it out as his to inherit. But when Bethany announced to her grandmother that she was engaged, Helen insisted that she must have the vase.

POT & HOLLY

sandy — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:29:18 +0000

Rachel’s childhood was much like many childhoods of the late 50s and early 60s. There was regular church attendance and a degree of order and conformity to her life that she didn’t miss when she began university. Her childhood had been privileged and largely happy but she relished the 70s and the new freedom of a less stratified society. At Norwich she met Steve and Abdhul. Abdhul left to travel across India and Steve and Rachel moved into a commune. They were joined by Rachel’s friend Eileen. Rachel wrote to Abdhul about her friend and when he returned to England Abdhul and Eileen began dating, they later married. Abdhul made this seaweed pattern pot and gave it to Rachel when Eileen left the shared barn. Rachel has now passed it on to her daughter Holly.

HEAD & DANIEL

sandy — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:14:40 +0000

They met on a boat. Gertie was travelling to Italy and Chummie to Germany. She was leaving home to train as an opera singer. The purpose of Chummie’s trip was to persuade his relatives to follow him to South Africa and escape the growing threat of the Nazis. Gertie and Chummie married in Johannesburg. He continued his work as an insurance broker while fundraising for the evacuation of Jews. In 1948 he travelled to the Congo in search of donations. This is where he bought the ebony head. At the age of forty he died. Daniel never met his grandfather and Gertie never re-married. But she has always been strong. A few weeks ago, at the age of 97, she renewed her driving license and just a year ago she had hip replacement surgery so she could continue practising yoga. Her grandson married in a small family ceremony in Johannesburg, this head was her wedding gift to Daniel and his new wife, Bethany.

CHISELS & BEN

sandy — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:46:00 +0000

Norman bought the land because of the oak tree. Any fallen branches were used, sculpted into rabbits, drawer handles and magazine racks. Everything in the house was made from solid oak. Each piece, from the stairs to the grandfather clock to the small animals he carved, bore the intertwined initials N and E. He’d proposed to Liz just a month after meeting her. They met at work where she taught English and he taught technical drawing. Norman kept the best work from ‘his boys’. After his retirement, his eyebrows growing into increasingly unruly caterpillars that he perpetually stroked, he passed the ‘bits of old paper that had faded and smelt funny’ to Ben. In 2010 Norman died and Liz gave Ben his tools. Ben is making a box for them, to keep them as ship shape and sharp as his Great Uncle kept them. And the wood Ben is using? Oak.

MANGER & JULIE

sandy — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:22:26 +0000

It’s April and the mantlepiece is littered with sheep dwarfed by their gamboling lambs, the baby Jesus lies in a manger crushed under the weight of his Fimo pretender, a flocked Bambi cowers outside while green butterflies the size of kites fly over the roof. Their home was constructed out of vegetable boxes that Kiran collected from the local market in Dalston. Over 17 years the strange menagerie has grown. When Kiran and Julie’s son Max was 3, he sculpted some piggies from Fimo. Julie picked up some mismatched kings in Naples and a camel from a local charity shop, even a Spanish nun, St Rita – bought because she shares a name with Julie’s mother. This motley crew live together in perfect harmony on a bed of pine needles from last year’s Christmas tree. Even a candle setting the manger alight couldn’t disrupt the peace. Kiran arrived home to see flames licking from the roof, he threw the burning mass into a sink. The only evidence now is the slightly charred tummy of an angel and a few blackened beams. The manger is the sweet and eccentric centrepiece of the room, pointless then to have it out just for Christmas.

RECIPES & BARBARA

sandy — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:16:24 +0000

Helen lived with her mother, father and two uncles. George shared several businesses and a home with his brothers, Helen’s other ‘fathers’. Together they ran the local bank, a farm, a grocery store, plumbing business and some apartment buildings. In the 1860s the construction of a railroad put Dunellen on the map but the local’s attitude remained determinedly ‘small town’. Both Helen and her best friend Mary however had ambitions beyond the town’s borders. Helen took a job in New York and regularly wore fur to college football games, Mary went on cruises and played golf. It was Mary who introduced Helen to Tom, her brother. In 1938 they married, left town and had two girls but a few years later Tom learnt that he had cancer. His daughter Barbara was just 5 when he died. His one wish was that Helen ‘stay home and take care of the girls’. And so she did. The family moved back to Dunellen and the girls went to the local school. They’d walk home, work up an appetite and return to the smell of baking cakes; Mabel’s Milk and Honey, Mrs Lutz’s Tomato or Kathleen Kiefer’s Coffee cake. This is Helen’s recipe box, inherited by Barbara and filled with the tastes and smells of her New Jersey childhood.

BOOK & SUSANA

sandy — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:21:41 +0000

Julio left Paris before he finished his degree, he returned to Canton and a home ravaged by civil war. The delicate truce brokered between Mao and Chiang Kai-shek faltered and Chiang fled to Taiwan. As a sympathiser, Julio boarded the first boat sailing down the Pearl River. He arrived in Panama in 1939. His name, like two footprints, tracks his journey to Colombia (Julio) from China (Cheng). He eventually moved to Barranquilla, working for the Chinese consulate and bringing up his two boys. His son Jaime joined the Colombian navy. While Jaime was stationed in New Orleans Julio moved to the island of San Andrés. Julio never met Jaime’s daughter – his granddaughter, but Susana gained some sense of who Julio was as a man through his books. Aged 13 she would rifle through them and it was his ‘Secretos del Cosmos’ that began her fascination with astronomy. Through Roman’s book she discovered Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’, a treatise that underscores ‘our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.’ For the young Susana there was no better vantage for a clear view of the vast cosmos than her grandfather’s remote home.

SKULL & JOEL

sandy — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:17:38 +0000

By the time Joel and Harri left the pub the stars were out, the pin holes pricking the black sky were just a little fuzzy from the beer. In bed Joel stared at a ceiling littered with a set of luminous plastic stars he’d put up as a boy. He now lives in Hackney where light pollution has snuffed out the perspective he’d seen from the Brecon Beacons. The city’s skies are orange and small. Joel bought this skull in a London percussion shop. It sits on his desk at work. Shaken like a maraca it makes a low pitch rattle. But it also serves as a reminder that under our skin we’re all the same, that there’s more that binds us than separates us, that ‘it’s important to remember your mortality when bullshit gets in the way’. Joel quickly punctures the morbid conversation. Grinning, he says that the skull also glows in the dark. He then quotes an episode of ‘Porridge’ where the seasoned Fletch offers Lennie, his young cellmate, some sage advice – you’re born, you die and it’s up to you to fill the time in between.