My current project involves combining images with text. As much as an image can be used to "illustrate" a piece of text, text can also be used to "illustrate" an image. Working in conjuction with the writer David Harrison, a piece of work is being constructed which explores this phenomenon. David writes idiosyncratic observations of everyday life, which in many respects are the literary equivalents of my images. Some examples of David's work are shown below.

 

A laugh with Jim. Jim has turned all the books in his huge bookcase spine in. It renders them anonymous, mysterious: lost volumes. Jim seems to know each of them even with just the flesh showing. Each book has a grey smudge on the white side, a thumbing mark. Some have hardly been read and are still bright all the way up and down, and others have been heavily used, bent, flicked through, held open at some pearl, at some illustration, some quote, some answer, and the favourites have dark bands of thumb. On the top shelves, a well consulted collection of volumes displays a more-or-less continuous line of thumb smudge from one book to the next, varying a little according to use and size of each, and I began to ask Jim what the best-read ones were. He reached them down in turn. Photographs, and essays on sculpture, design technique, philosophies, histories, biographies, every one an ancient and faithful friend. Eventually he stretched for the blackest, a tall, thin hardback. The best-read of all, the benchmark by which all other books in Jim's collection are measured. The one which, by it's thumb stripe, had been better used and in his artist's hands more often and more preciously than any other. He brought it down as a curator might gingerly move an exhibit, and finally it was revealed. The manual for his Volkswagen Polo, grubby from engine grease.

 

Walking out of Wimbledon School of Art with Jayne this afternoon on a break from hanging the MA shows, to take a trip to the Italian deli for mushroom bread, tomato soup and chocolate buttered croissants, Jayne knocked superfluously on a swing door as we left the building. "Imagine if you knocked on every door you went through" I began, picturing trains and cars, supermarkets, pubs and toilets, and we began an eager conversation on compulsion and obsession. I told her how I used to have a fear of the number 4, and she told me how 4 used to be her lucky number since she once won a bread knife at a tombola and gave it to her mother. I recalled how I had seen a man interviewed on television who had so much trouble keeping his house spotless that he eventually moved into his car, and there was another who felt compelled to lie down in the road facing north and lost both his legs to passing cars. We had both gone through a phase of turning knobs and turning them back again just a little bit "to be fair" on cookers, dimmer switches and TVs especially. We reasoned that this ritual had actually been an expression of our sensibility - one rough turn of the knob to approximately the right position was then refined by an inner voice which said "You can do better than that, and what's more, you owe it to yourself". So years of furtive and exacting twiddling, maybe that happens to many of us. I know Mark Aldridge did it too. And we fantasised and recalled and laughed, our arms now full of soup and cakes, when suddenly Jayne stopped dead and stared at the pavement where a dull two pence piece lay at her feet. "I found one of these yesterday", she announced, placing her shopping on the roof of the car parked just there. She bent down, picked up the coin, kissed it three times, blew on it, and kissed thrice more before popping it into her shirt pocket.

 

I haven't thought of it since and I don't know why it should occur to me now, but my uncle Phil came to visit and took me to a celebrity football match at the now defunct Bletchley FC ground. There was an old footballer, I think his name was Monnie Halliwell, and he had two sons playing in the (then) First Division. There was some connection with West Ham, I seem to remember, and he explained it all at the time, but I was an idiot 11 year old and I hadn't heard of any of these celebrities so I had to ask them all who they were and then established whether they really were worthy of contributing to my autograph collection on the basis of what they said. On another occasion Mia Farrow explained to me that she was "an actress". If she had only said that she was Frank Sinatra's ex-wife, I had heard of him. She was very patient and not at all put out that I was evidently more interested in John Le Mesurier who was standing next to her but who was about to leave in a hot air balloon, because at least I knew him from Dad's Army. Anyway, the one undeniable celebrity at the football, to my narrow, merciless vision, was Bill Oddie. And he scored a goal. He was my first real autograph so I had yet to make my autograph book with a picture of a pen on it drawn in biro and the word "Autographs" done in a casual, famous, baroque swirl on the cover. My book was ready for Roy Castle, and Rolf Harris, and my good friend Mia, but Bill was so well organised it didn't matter that I hadn't planned ahead. He had presigned photos of himself, and The Goodies was current TV so it was of real value. For a long time I thought Graeme Garden was where the Goodies lived, not Cricklewood. The photo was about 4 inches by 5 and it showed Bill with a beaming smile. The signature was beautiful: all the flourish of a true celebrity, and a grin drawn into the "O". I knew I had to keep it flat and safe, and on the way home, as uncle Phil crashed his car into oncoming traffic, I nearly bent it as I was thrown against the dashboard, but I protected it well and it arrived home unscathed. A few days later, I sneaked the photo out of the house. I don't recall why it was necessary to sneak, except that Mum probably had my best intentions at heart and thought I shouldn't traipse around the village showing my friends in case I damaged the photo I risked my life for. In the same way that I sneaked everything out of the house, from matches, (with toilet paper stuffed in the box to stop them rattling) at eight, cigarettes at fourteen, and eventually Dad's home brew at eighteen, I brought the photo out some hours before, when the coast was clear, and concealed it in one of many cubby holes in the garden known only to me and maybe to Steve, and simply collected it when I was already out of the house. I now realise that this sort of complex arrangement forms the basis of intriguing thrillers and possibly also real-life drama, the only difference being that James Bond or Donald Sutherland or whoever doesn't place his photo of Bill Oddie under a tile by the drain cover without checking what's under the tile. Later, when I lifted it to retrieve my photo, I could see I had squashed a spider, a very small one, onto the emulsion. The body of the spider had dissolved the surface of the print, leaving a little pit of white, surrounded by eight little legs, on Bill Oddie's forehead.

 

At the Vortex, listening to Stan Tracey and Don Weller, tucking in to the Greek salad with Hev, Annette and the two Steves. I caught sight on the end of my fork of a lump of feta with a little black speck to one side. I knew I had seen it before but couldn't place it. I ate it and kept its image in my mind through the second set, the chocolate cake, and two more pints of beer. As we left, down the narrow stairs, my head and stomach both in happy stupor, it finally came to me. Lise's Jack Russell, Kelly.

 

On the train from East Croydon yesterday, a hot and muggy ride in an old-fashioned carriage with high-backed seats like booths, a young Asian woman opposite me slipped off a sandal, massaged her toes and produced a little blue cannister from her bag. She gave a couple of squirts and a mist descended onto the overworked feet. As the mist condensed, she closed her eyes and gently tilted back her head, her mouth open. Presently a long, low groan could be heard. After a while she came round and nursed the other foot in a similar way. This time I think she actually came. "Me next", I said, not wanting to be left out, and she told me to take off my shoes and socks. I revealed my white, puffy, damp, warm feet, and without a word being spoken I had footspray sex with a complete stranger. When it was over I left my feet dangling off the edge of the seat, the breeze now fanning them. I was in no state to move, and when the train pulled in to Clapham Junction, my destination, I decided to travel on to Victoria rather than get dressed.