in the limelight

The lay of the case: Simon Amstell's hair

OK, now here is how a hung parliament works…

No, we've had enough of that for today. Unlikely as it seems, our nascent blogging is rooted in Simon Amstell's hair. This story from former colleague David Hyde's wonderful design blog makes the connection clear.

Here is Simon's hair a year or two back…

And here is ID's circa 1968…

But there is a political point to be made here. There am I at school in Barnsley in the 60s doing arty top-lit self portraits to try to get into art college or university, and two years later I'm at Reading University on a full grant. That kind of social mobility was only made possible by the Labour government of that time, and these days hardly anybody gets the exit velocity to leave the black hole. A big thank you to Michael Twyman is due, and also to Terry Frost who at the interview thought he might be getting someone with spinner's fingers for the art department cricket team.

 

Since the story is also about the lay of the case, the next link is that the blonde and I fed ourselves and our daughter by printing letterpress wood-type film society posters on an Albion Press.

 

 

We came out of University in 1973 with no money but no debts and a record collection. Now the average student debt is tens of thousands of pounds and Universities are going on strike.

 

The lay of the case: owzthat

This is the story of a typecase hanging on our wall near Cemetery Junction. The case itself came from Parnells the Printers in Reading. Over the decades it's gathered a collection of ephemera which we'll riff upon, compartment by compartment and see where it takes us.

This week it's "Owzthat", a game I thought must have disappeared in the 40+ years since we used to play it at Barnsley Holgate Grammar School (famous Alumni include Michael Parkinson). We had a virtual version we used to play in the church choir, which involved words we knew would turn up in the sermon and which we allocated scores to, or decisions on whether a batsman was out. Atheism was clearly only a long hop away.

I used to rue the hours wasted in church, but now know that the architecture and art there were the basis for a life in design. And the musical education stays with you for ever.

Next week, Simon Amstell's hair.

The lay of the case

OK, here's an unashamedly self indulgent piece of nostalgia from Jo and Ian, which may (with a bit of luck and hard work) provide a diverting cultural history of the last 40 years or so.

It's the story of a typecase hanging on our wall near Cemetery Junction. The case itself came from Parnells the Printers in Reading. Over the decades it's gathered a collection of ephemera which we'll riff upon, compartment by compartment and see where it takes us.

The story will start in Barnsley around 1962 with Owzthat... 

 

Do we need an extra hand?

We stand at the beginning of our blogging journey like the three party leaders in their first TV debate.

The consensus is that they were all nervous, like on a first date. The blonde and I weren't convinced by Clegg's too-conscious looking into the camera lens. And the sound being out of sync with the pictures on our cable TV made them all seem slightly drunk. Or was that us?

What impressed most, and maybe explained the nerves, was the repertoire of hand gestures which had to be marshaled. Never having had any lessons in public speaking we wonder how you keep the brain on message whilst summoning up the election-winning gesture. Going to have to read the Book of Tells by Peter Collett, we think.

Is it possible to win a pitch or an election by being natural, or is it as Giradoux says?: the secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.

Image courtesy of The Guardian

It ain't much, but it's home

The release of Ricky Gervais' Cemetery Junction has forced us out of hiding and into starting an Indent blog.

Ever since we started up in the mid seventies, in the days before satnav and Google maps, we've told people coming to our studio to take the 5th left after Cemetery Junction on the London Road.

Map courtesy of Google Maps

Here's how Wikipedia describes it: Cemetery Junction is a road junction in the East Reading district of the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It is a notorious bottleneck for traffic during rush hour, with the main A4 road meeting the A329 road from Wokingham. The junction is named after a cemetery just to the east. There are food shops, takeaway food outlets, public houses, public toilets, a Post office, a swimming pool, a Church and a pharmacy.

 

Not much to celebrate there is there? And no-one really famous seems to be buried there. In fact in 35 years we've never actually been into the cemetery. And it's not exactly encouraging that Google says the Cemetery Junction Community website may harm your computer.

You can see what Ali Caterall, in Word Magazine’s review of the film, means when he says 'When Springsteen sings “it's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win” he probably isn't thinking about the intersection of the A4 and A329 in Reading but he might make the connection soon…that lyrical air punch from Thunder Road inspired it all from the start.'

But we love Reading and we love this area. It's got a great mix of people of all ages and cultures, some fine Victorian architecture, and it is on one of Britain’s great highways.

The A4 has gone through many transformations through the ages from following pre-Roman Ley Lines, through Roman road building and very basic wagon tracks. It wasn’t until the 17th Century that a distinct route between London and Bristol started to resemble today’s road. During the 17th Century, the A4 was known as the Great Road to Bristol.

But as a gateway to Reading it's a mess.

Indent has tried on various occasions to get improvements to the Junction's townscape onto the local political agenda, but the efforts went the way of all flesh. We're therefore backing the new campaign by Rob White to make Cemetery Junction a better place to be.