Sunday 10th September; “Speed-data-radio” event at the ICA:
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006I dreamt I was in a theatre wearing a jacket covered in wires, my partner was in the audience, in fact she was the whole audience, all the other seats were empty. There were about ten tables with microphones on them, people seated around maybe half, they were talking about radio I think though you could only hear snatches… in a corner was a separate table where only two people could sit if they wanted to talk about themselves or maybe confess to something… I was at this table talking to Cecilia Wee, I waved to my partner in the audience, I think we talked about food for a while and then Cecilia told me about industrial sites in Europe… in the gloom I could make out Ed Baxter who would occasionally walk around selecting people to move to another table… I found myself talking to a woman from the BBC, we were apparently live on air… eventually we talked about radio being like a seance and how could you perform magic on radio? I read out a short story and woke up in St James’s Park…
I asked my friend Maurice if he had a radio story.
He lent me a 1950s wire recorder, having written on both sides of it in indelible ink; ‘Property of Captain Maurice Seddon, private museum of ancient wireless, Minifon German wire recorder’. With Maurice, aesthetics are irrelevant, he will drill a hole through the side of a wooden cabinet and thread wires through it, anything to repair a gadget or piece of sound equipment, with no regard for how it looks.
Would he have some nugget of information, something which might have happened when he was in the Royal Signals and his sister lived with Marconi’s daughter in Rome.
“The Marconis were half Irish”, he said.
We drove from his house at the edge of Heathrow airport where planes fly so low that conversation is difficult, to a large pub outside Old Windsor overlooking the Thames.
Clambering out of the car, clutching a red and white striped stick with his name and address written down the length of it, Maurice entered the pub, standing room only, to a soundtrack by Madonna.
“No beer for me thankyou, my family were all alcoholics,” and approached the ‘eat as much as you like’ salad bar, clutching a bowl, slowly filling it with ten different salads to accompany Scampi and chips.
“What is thousand island dressing?” he asked.
“I don’t know” I said, as he laboriously piled on blue cheese dressing, honey and mustard dressing, vinaigrette dressing, yogurt dressing, and of course thousand island dressing, attracting the attention of other customers as he caught his forehead on the glass roof of the salad counter, complaining loudly about the danger of this which must surely contravene health and safety regulations.
Seated outside, between the road and the pub under a vast parasol advertising something alcoholic, we talked through the sound of endless traffic, overhead planes, the chugging of passing boats, the chirping of birds, the banter of waitress and customer, and a gameboy.
Moving on to Windsor Farm shop we sat outside to have tea where Maurice laid a chair on its side.
“It’s broken” he said, in fact one leg had subsided into a hole in the grass. He took off his pullover, revealing a well worn T shirt with the words ‘ex-charity shop’ handwritten across the front.
“I did it myself” he said.
“Can I take a photograph?” I asked him.
“Is that a video camera, how much does such a thing cost? Shall I comb my hair?” and proceeded to comb his long white hair which I would have preferred in its wilder state.
“As you have a camera with you, you would be doing me a great service by photographing my leg which I could then use as a record of… have you seen it, have I shown you my leg? It’s actually in a shocking state, if I roll up my trousers you can see it”.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to do that in a public place Maurice”.
“No, I need you to photograph it!” and continued to roll up the leg of his corduroy trousers, the one bare leg now shoeless and sockless, exposed to above the knee revealing red hard skin, deep dark red which looked almost like hardened roast beef and a swollen foot.
“Shall I turn so you can see the back?”
I started to film with the mini dv camera.
“Does it have sound?”
“Yes”.
“Amazing. It was a thrombosis, blocking of blood vessels due to clotting which shouldn’t be there, limited feeling, it’s a killer, it can recur at any time and that is why I take Warfarin, shall I revolve it round and show you, we ought to get it from all angles, it’s permanently discoloured, are you seeing it well, are you getting a good image, is that alright? [Cough cough] that’s my emphysema which is a lung condition due to twelve years compulsory nicotine consumption from my colleagues in Royal Signals, shall I give you a bottom view of the foot, does that help at all, and the other leg is also affected to some degree…”
A man in a striped shirt and dark trousers approached our table and asked: “What are you doing?”
Maurice looked up at him:
“We are taking photographs for historic, medical and possible future legal use of an injured, defective and very ill leg, do you see the condition, I have to take a careful balance of Warfarin every day for the rest of my life, it’s not curable, just Warfarin, it’s called thrombosis, one can die of an internal haemorrhage and loss of blood, do you have such a condition?”
The man replied:
“No I don’t have a condition. You’re on the grounds of Windsor Park. No photography is allowed on grounds of security. People are eating here and don’t want to look at someone’s thrombosis”.
