Postcards & Postscripts

My daughter has moved into her new flat and I've come over to help her unpack. Can you open that one over there, she says, pointing to a large box in the corner. Hmm this is light? I thought it was books, I say. Dunno, see what's in it... Right. I tear off the tape and open the lid. Merle, this is my globe...the one my dad gave me on my eighth birthday. What? I don't understand? Yes, in 1955! Where's it been since then? I thought it had disappeared years ago. Sorry dad, I didn't know it belonged to you. Lift it out of the box and let's have a look. I reach down and hold the globe very gently. The colour has completely faded over the years but memories come flooding back as I cradle it.

I'm transported back to my birthday in April 1955. Dad, all these bright colours on the globe...what do they mean? Are they countries? There are lots of reds. And blues and greens. Dad takes the globe from me and Slowly turns it in his hands. These are colonies, son, he says. Colonies? Yes, countries that belong to us. The red ones here are British colonies. I'll show you...let's look at Africa. Dad brings the globe closer and I can see the continent's outlines. There's a cluster of red patches, each distinguished by faintly dotted borders, running through the middle and down the right side. I look closely once again. I can see Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia - and what about these blue-coloured countries? French Cameroon, French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa? Why have they got French names? Do French people live there, not Africans? | recall my innocent puzzlement now with a sigh...

I'm sitting next to my grandmother. We are looking across the wide Humber Estuary. "My dear boy", she says, "this view always reminds me of the Irrawaddy river in Burma". The low sun is slowly setting behind us, casting a golden shimmer across the flat riverscape. I turn and look at her face, lined and sad. "Why's that Granny?" "Hmm..this view brings back many memories about my life with your grandfather in Burma. Building bridges, crossing rivers. But looking down at the muddy waters I suppose...well..."

I stay quiet, then my mind jump-starts and I'm transported into a different country and a different time. Muddy waters means something else to me.
In my young imagination, this estuary could easily be the Mississippi Delta.
And I am listening to my newly discovered hero Muddy Waters, vanguard Black American bluesman extraordinaire. He has surged into our lives in England and turned our musical worlds upside down. And what of his fellow travellers? Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, Leadbelly. They came from the Delta and introduced a sound that would course its way into the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the burgeoning UK blues scene in London: John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Long John Baldry, so many. This soulful 12-bar generation would define our musical language for years to come. I even fantasised about changing my name in an act of supreme appreciation: Blind Lemon Chappell? Perhaps not. I'm just a 14 year old and it wouldn't look good on my form teacher's register, would it?

Today, in 2024, I'm remembering John O'Leary, one of the UK's finest blues harmonica players, who passed away earlier this year. I was fortunate to know him in the last few months of his life. I'll go to his memorial service which I'm certain will be a 60s blues reunion concert. Venue? My money's on the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.

Visiting the school library one afternoon, my eyes fall upon a small collection of magazines tucked discreetly in one corner. Maybe lesser fare for grammar school boys but l'm intrigued: they're foreign magazines, glimpses into faraway lands, cultures and lifestyles. Paris Match catches my eye. Is it the colour, the format, the adverts? Or the photographs? Yes, we've got our own dowdy fashion and leisure magazines but nothing so exotic as Paris Match: unreadable, but enticing for a 12 year old English-speaking school boy.

Fast forward to the early 70s when I was given a copy of Roland Barthes Mythologies - first published in 1957 - which opened my eyes to new ways of image-making. Written from a French perspective, Barthes' essays on the language of mass culture showed how world views are codified by the interplay of language and image. Following Barthes, a new body of academic work emerged in sociology, film and media studies. Since then, I began to study how images and texts can be manipulated to present our perceived reality as 'natural' and 'common sense'.

Based on covers from Paris Match, my 1959 image depicts a uniformed French cadet of colonial ancestry whose salute signifies his allegiance to France. Alongside him is Brigitte Bardot who embodies the joie de vivre of French chic. Complementing these images is the iconic Citroen DS19, the epitome of French design and technological prowess. So these signifers interplay with one another to create a symbolic representation of France.

I was just a school boy when I first browsed Paris match, but the codified 'sign-systems' of image and text remain an eduring passion for me as I navigate the new 'populisms' embedded in today's AI-generated landscapes.

It's July 2024: I am visiting an exhibition at the Sainsbury's Visual Arts Centre in Norwich called 'In Event of Moon Disaster'. It coincides with the 55th anniversary of the moon landing.

The main display, central to the exhibition and designed by my brother, is a replica of a 1960s living room. There are two arm chairs and a coffee table. Heavily patterned wallpaper and a feature clock loom over a television set which stands on a teak G-Plan sideboard. On the right-hand side of the living room is a bookcase which displays a photograph of me and my family on holiday, among other mementos. On the television screen is a grave-looking President Richard Nixon. He has a pre-recorded speech which will be broadcast in the event of a failed moon landing. Was this a back-up plan or a conspiracy theory?

On the evening of July 20th 1969, I'm sitting with my family in that same living room. We watch the grainy black-and-white moving images in awe: we know we are witnessing history in the making. It didn't occur to any of us that this could be 'fake news'. How could it? The world was a more trusting place then, wasn't it? And this must be real.

Stepping from the Eagle space craft, Neil Armstrong says to the watching world, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". But as he speaks, I suddenly think about John Lennon and Yoko Ono's new song
'Give Peace a Chance. It was recorded six weeks earlier in a Montreal hotel during their famous 'bed-in'.

Overnight the song became an anthem for the dramatic upheavals of the 1960s and - sadly - it's as relevant today, 55 years later.

13 days in October and edging towards the abyss: World War 3 is about to begin…..what???

I am in my fourth year at Hull Grammar School and becoming politically aware. Savvy, I think now in terms of differentiating between serious political events and tabloid gossip - as l'd witnessed earlier with the Christine Keeler scandal.

The beginning of the 60s was the era of John F Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and the serious intensification of the Cold War. The threat from Khrushchev's Soviet Union loomed at a precipitously dangerous pace for the West and no more so than in the USA's back-yard - Cuba. Three years earlier, Cuba's government had been overthrown by the charismatic Marxist-Leninist Fidel Castro, who had created a one-party communist state, the first in the Western hemisphere. This was the very antithesis to everything the US government stood for. In response, the US attempted unsuccessfully to dislodge Castro through assassination attempts, economic embargoes and invasions. Acting to counter these threats to his regime, Castro aligned with the Soviet Union, and allowed Soviet nuclear missiles onto his island. For those 13 days in October the US and Soviet Union faced off in dramatic fashion: the world held its breath. Who would blink first?

In parochial Hull, meanwhile, it's a sunny autumn afternoon. But as the school bell rings for the beginning of the afternoon lessons, one pupil - Andrew Timpson, returning after lunch - brings us the terrifying news that WW3 would start later today! What to do? It was only later in the evening that we learned the world had been saved by a red telephone - a new 'hot-line' communication between the Soviet Union and the USA.
Khrushchev had backed down...

My mum was the one who introduced me to the piano.

In 1955 we relocated to the suburbs and so had enough room for her piano.
I'd no idea she had one, let alone that she was an accomplished player. Soon I'd hear Chopin's Waltzes, Schumann's Carnaval and Debussy brightening our living room. Then the crunch: Adrian, you're going to learn the piano On that note - resistance was futile - I was introduced to Miss Belinda Cooper, my piano teacher. From then on, every Friday afternoon after school for eight years, I was despatched for scales and arpeggios practice, sight reading and prepping for interminable pianoforte examinations. I got to Grade Six, but then school 'O' levels took precedence and I stopped.

Miss Cooper shared her sparse home with two black Labradors and a magnificent Bechstein grand piano. Her study was always dark, even in the summer: black floor, black walls, black piano and black dogs. Atmospheric you'd suppose - until the electricity meter ran out and plunged us into darkness. She'd shuffle off to find a shilling or two to feed the meter, leaving me with the two dogs sniffing between my legs, with the sound of their claws padding across the floorboards.

I may sound ungrateful for these experiences but l'm not. Miss Cooper was dedicated and took pride in my achievements. But - and this was THE salutary lesson - I was unable to play a single note without a music manuscript. It was another 10 years before I met a musician who taught me to improvise, syncopate and vamp...and then some - yes!