Well I’m back in hospital. I had a rough night on Sunday, my lungs decided to give up. It seems that 85% oxygen saturation is potentially life threatening. 111 sent the ambulance about 30 second into the call. The ambulance driver recognised the house, he had been before, to pick up a friend of Eva’s, who chose to come to our place to be ill. They poked and prodded me, took gallons of blood, and came up with two scenarios, one, fluid around the heart, the heart valve is not working so it is not clearing the fluid as it should, and two, an infection, so they treated me for both. Antibiotics for the infection, and initially diuretics for the heart fluid. I had just spent the previous few days ingesting vast quantities of water to stave off dehydration. I needed a bucket to go with the diuretics, a very large bucket. That all settled down and they decided it was an infection in the end. But I have to stay in until my oxygen levels are respectable, 96/99 , and they don’t diminish on exercising. I tried to tell them not to worry as I don’t exercise , it didn’t work. I should be out soon, an infection aggravated by the heatwave. I have to get to ward where I can walk up and down in an oxygen tent or something.
Alarms going off, blood all over the floor, people forced into nappies as they don’t have enough staff to bring bed pans. Drunk polish building workers with limbs hanging off wandering around like zombies from hell. Crash trollies missing, agency staff hiding to avoid work. One toilet cubicle for 14 bays. That’s once you have made it into the inner sanctum passed the 250 facing a 10hr wait to see a Dr. I want to go to Lambs Cafe for my breakfast, but I have to sit here amongst the carnage, connected to a broken oxygen machine that is irritating my nose causing it to swell and block, making me sneeze. Sleep would be nice but the moaning from bay 5 has started again….
My hands look like Donald Trump’s, extensive bruising from incompetent would be phlebotomists. A swollen nose from snorting too much of the stuff that keeps us going, oxygen, come on keep up, and damp trousers starting smell of urine after struggling to keep up with the diuretics and prostate pills. At least we have hit a moment of calm, perhaps there is a fight in the corridor preventing the movement of people, perhaps Israel is trying to annex the place. I realise now we bypassed however many were waiting at 7.10 yesterday, because I needed oxygen, I went straight to a bay in the inner sanctum. Passed the fights and the chaos, passed the corridors piled with the accidentally bed bound, straight into a room of my own. Ive been moved again to a back office down a twisting corridor barely big enough for the bed to wind its way through . I feel cut off and isolated the room is tiny, but on suite. My own loo !! This is only a temporary room, they are still looking for a ward to exile me too.
Author: admin (Page 2 of 24)
An archival digital print, 40 x 40cm, with and accompanying explanatory booklet, £75.
Available in other sizes on request.
The accompanying booklet details each of the bits of the picture and explains them it a little detail. It has its own scratch and sniff card included. It also has a dust jacket that when unfolded reveals a copy of the the picture, all be it in very poor quality.
This picture will be on display in The Mill, 7 – 11 Coppermill Lane, E17 7HA, June 2nd till the 8th of August, which covers the duration of the E17 Arts Trail, No 20 on the map, and there will be a “meet the artists” event on the afternoon of the 6th. A larger version of the print, 80cm square, will be in Winns Gallery, Lloyd Park, No 54 on the art trail map, from the 6th to the 14th of June, 11 – 5, with a “meet the artists” event on the 5th, 6 till 8.
THE STORY…
This was a tortuous print to produce, not because of the print itself but the surrounding circumstances. I lost computers, hard drives, data and friends. I was in and out of hospital, and surrounded by doubt, I had got to the point when I thought it would never happen. But here it is.
Originally this started out as submission to an exhibition in the Pictorem Gallery, organised and curated by David Sullivan , under the title “Cover”. The idea being to create a work in the style of another artist. Although initially I had dismissed the offer, after all he had written to me saying, “I didn’t realise you were still alive”, but I had an epiphany, not to clump him the I next saw him, but to make something, time was short and lots was happening, but I had an idea.
I was going to do a montage of Walthamstow based on the Peter Blake Beatles album cover, “Sargent Pepper”. I managed to get a good way into it when I lost my hard drive in a puff of smoke. The voltage regulators failed, allowing the whole thing to burn out. Predictably I only had half of it backed up, and being pressed for time and unable to complete it I submitted something else instead.
But the project stuck in my head and I plodded on, through what was a very difficult year. I rebuild the artwork, carried on researching, made field trips to do brass rubbings and take photos, consult archives, delve into the world wide web, read lots of books, I even had to grow my own marijuana and knotweed . All good fun. But what I anticipated being a few images tagged together with an A4 sheet for an index turned into a 32 page booklet with cover, and a fold out fly-cover / dust-jacket, to cover the 115 entries.
It must be said, it is a very personal history, it will not be the same as your history and different again to your neighbours, what was important to me, or caught my eye, will not necessarily have caught yours. But Walthamstow is my home I’ve lived here for 50 years, known the place a lot longer, and I am very attached to it, these are my memories.
At some point I will redesign the booklet, it is very poorly laid out, and possibly make a good quality dust jacket. But that is for the future.