Jinny Blom: Why We All Need Somewhere to Hide

Summary

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Homing Podcast: "Jinny Blom – Why We All Need Somewhere to Hide"

Host: Matt Gibberd
Guest: Jinny Blom, Landscape Designer
Date: July 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This deeply personal episode features celebrated landscape designer Jinny Blom in conversation with Matt Gibberd. Set in Jinny’s unique Oxfordshire home—a converted 16th-century barn—the interview weaves through her remarkable life path: from a childhood marked by loss and trauma, through a career in psychotherapy with some of the country’s most vulnerable, to her celebrated gardens which place safety at their heart. Jinny opens up about the drive to create spaces of peace and containment, both for herself and others, and explores how a search for belonging and psychological safety continues to shape her design values and personal sense of home.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Childhood Loss, Trauma, and Effects on Home

• Jinny discusses her early family life, marked by the departure of both parents (00:02, 10:52, 12:12).
• The emotional impact of abandonment led her to seek control, hiding as a coping mechanism, and developing acute sensitivity to her environment.
  • “My dad left when I was six and then my mother left when I was 13. So I was on my own from when I was 13. And that has a very particular effect on you. I just faded out of existence, I would say. And I spent most of my time hiding.” – Jinny Blom, (00:02, 10:53)
• Childhood led to fascination with mapping, detail, and proportion in her physical surroundings (05:15, 17:59).
• The earliest memories of safety: “My favourite place in the house was under the piano and I could spend hours and hours and hours under there. Really, I found it very comforting.” – Jinny Blom (12:12)

2. Built Environments, Sensory Sensitivity, and Synaesthesia

• Jinny is synaesthetic, intensely affected by space and colour; finds comfort in well-considered proportions rather than grand scale or opulence (05:15–09:12).
  • “The proportions of this house are very well considered… Where there’s that level of consideration, somehow it helps one feel comfortable and at peace.” – Jinny Blom (07:04)
• Discomfort in certain architectural contexts, linked profoundly to emotion:
  • “There was something about this oblique angle and the monotony of how they looked that really affected me and I threw up down the back of his neck.” – Jinny recounting seeing a row of 1930s terraced houses (05:15)

3. Journey to Psycho-Therapy and Landscape Design

• Education, career, and art choices were partly dictated by early independence and maternal interference (29:27).
• Years spent working with men with schizophrenia and PTSD ("the real thing”), and reflective insights on working with trauma:
  • “I find it very difficult when people talk about mental health problems like it's having a Veruca. Because it isn’t.” – Jinny Blom (32:33)
  • “It was hardcore, yeah. And we had three residential houses in Brixton. … Anyone who goes into that line of work definitely has stuff to sort out for themselves.” (32:37)
• Loss and death (of friends in the AIDS crisis especially) prompted a shift:
  • “All my four closest friends died, and my four pets died within months of each other... I had a prophetic dream … ‘please can I be a gardener?’... And after that, everything just sort of fell into place.” – Jinny (33:48–36:29)

4. Nature, Healing, and the Therapeutic Garden

• Profound link between nature and recovery, rooted in early experience and reified by her work designing hospital gardens:
  • “Just that thing of being able to see the non-prescriptive nature of nature, you know, the light changing, the clouds changing, you can’t predict it, … I think something very profound happens to a human being.” – Jinny (36:51–38:51)
• Describes her design for hospital ICU: “People want to go and die in the garden that we’ve built. … There’s something about it, just knowing that this is a bigger thing than you.” (38:51)

5. Home, Art, and Intention

• House is a collaborative work with her partner, Mark; filled with meaningful art objects and stories, reminiscent of places like Kettle’s Yard (41:52).
  • “Everything has a story behind it. It's not about the way it looks. There's so many layers of meaning here.” – Matt (72:19)
• Mark’s background as an A&R man and both partners’ shared instinct for collecting, with a focus on English surrealism, British and émigré artists, and many women (44:21–46:53).

6. Garden Design: Safety, Structure & Containment

• “Safety can be structured… One element of safety is being able to see what’s coming.” (47:22)
• Gardens are designed for containment and familiarity, drawing from medieval forms and psychological need:
  • “The idea of a garden where there's a lawn with stuff around the edge does my head in, because why would you want to sit in a kind of blast zone of grass? … I want to be in amongst the plants and everything that they've got to offer…” (00:02, 49:26)
  • The “solar plexus rule” for wall height creating psychological safety (48:41).

7. The Relationship between Past and Professional Practice

• Experiences of neglect, abuse, and lack of safety inform her meticulous, nurturing approach to landscape:
  • “If you are badly brought up, you carry a fear of passing it on or not being able to look after things well. And I think that is something that has challenged me… So I think in doing the job that I do, I do it very well. I mean, you know, it’s just important.” (56:11)
  • “You can’t neglect [plants]… If you start growing plants, you can't neglect them, you can't leave them to die in a pot. Something will be pulling you out in the early hours to make sure they're all right.” (57:52)

8. Loss, Resilience, and Transformation

• Repeated experiences of grief—from childhood through AIDS crisis—are a deep undercurrent:
  • “What do you do with grief? … What came out of everybody dying of AIDS for me was a complete reinvention…” (60:39–62:12)
• Human connection, once experienced, is foundational:
  • “If you've experienced love, unconditional love and real love like that, you don't forget it. And it is unbelievably sustaining, actually.” (69:27)

9. The Question of Belonging, Home & Self

• On feeling at home, internally and externally:
  • “You need to be able to… walk in safety. And that really is something. I feel extremely lucky that I’ve been born with the resources within me to do that, because a lot of people don’t have that.” (68:35–69:05)
• Final reflections on her home:
  • "We wake up every day and just can’t believe our luck, you know, because we both created ourselves out of nothing, really. And it just seems like it’s just brilliant.” (71:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On upbringing and hiding:
  “I just faded out of existence, I would say. And I spent most of my time hiding.”
  — Jinny Blom, (00:02, 10:53)

• On garden design as psychological safety:
  “One element of safety is being able to see what’s coming … there’s a sort of solar plexus height which is probably about 1.2 metres for most adults, which I think is the optimum. If you can protect your solar plexus you can protect yourself…[the wall]”
  — Jinny Blom, (48:41)

• On plants and care:
  “If you start growing plants you can't neglect them, you can't leave them to die in a pot. Something will be pulling you out in the early hours to make sure they're all right.”
  — Jinny Blom, (57:52)

• On love and resilience:
  “If you've experienced love, unconditional love and real love like that, you don't forget it. And it is unbelievably sustaining, actually.”
  — Jinny Blom, (69:27)

• On aesthetic experience and discomfort:
  “There was something about this oblique angle and the monotony of how they looked that really affected me and I threw up down the back of his neck.”
  — Jinny Blom, (05:15)

• On creativity and transformation after loss:
  “What came out of everybody dying of AIDS for me was a complete reinvention and then needing to really boot it into this new way of life. And I think that's how I process grief. I do something.”
  — Jinny Blom, (62:12)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:02: Jinny recounts childhood, family breakdown, the role of hiding
• 05:13–09:12: Effects of space, synaesthesia, emotional response to architecture
• 12:12: The formative memory of hiding under the piano
• 29:27–36:29: Career journey, psycho-therapy, the pivotal dream to become a gardener
• 36:51–39:37: The healing power of nature and design for hospitals
• 47:22–51:30: The psychology and practice of designing safe, structured gardens
• 56:11–59:16: How upbringing shapes her professional approach; on nurturing and care
• 60:39–62:12: Transformation catalyzed by loss and grief
• 69:27: The sustaining power of unconditional love

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Flow & Tone

Matt’s approach is gentle, reflective, and empathetic, drawing out Jinny’s vulnerability with genuine curiosity. Jinny is candid, articulate, and fiercely honest—unafraid to discuss trauma, abuse, and mental health, but equally drawn to practical, creative solutions and moments of levity ("the idea of a garden where there’s a lawn with stuff around the edge does my head in"). At its heart, the episode underscores the relationship between physical and psychological shelter, and the enduring human drive to create spaces where one can both hide and heal.

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Summary

Jinny Blom’s episode is a powerful meditation on the intersection between suffering, creativity, and home. Her life’s journey demonstrates how adversity and loss can become the wellspring for making beauty and safety in the world—not just for herself but for all those who experience her work. Her home and garden, rich in story and structure, manifest a profound search for peace, belonging, and meaning. An episode full of moving stories, sharp insights, and an unwavering belief in the necessity of somewhere to hide.

Transcript

[A]

My dad left when I was six and then my mother left when I was 13. So I was on my own from when I was 13. And that has a very particular effect on you. I just faded out of existence, I would say. And I spent most of my time hiding. From really early in my life, I've wanted to have control of my environment. I dreamt always of having my own house and my own space and peace. I think peacefulness is very important to me. And not too many people, not too much activity. The idea of a garden where there's a lawn with stuff around the edge does my head in, because why would you want to sit in a kind of blast zone of grass? I want to be in amongst the plants and everything that they've got to offer, you know, the bees, the smells, the brushing against things, you know. It's so nice. I feel lucky to have had a crazy life, really.

[B]

Hello, welcome to a new episode of Homing. I'm Matt Gibbard. Today's guest is the landscape designer Ginny Blom. Ginny previously worked for many years as a psychologist and psychotherapist, and she now explores the relationship between nature and health. Her sky garden at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a natural space that promotes recovery. And she's also worked with King Charles to create a healing garden using medicinal plants. We recorded this conversation at Ginny's extraordinary home in Oxfordshire, which is a converted threshing barn dating back to the 16th century. It's never been shared publicly before, so I was very grateful to her for hosting me. As always, there's a house tour to accompany the episode, which is available to subscribers on Patreon. I hadn't met Ginny before, but I was really, really touched by her honesty in this conversation. She tells me about a childhood which was marked by abandonment and abuse, how that shaped the way she experiences architecture and landscape, and also why every garden she designs begins with some sort of search for safety. We talk about the childhood hiding place that still influences her work today, the unusual rules she follows when designing a garden, and also how creating beautiful places became a way of making sense of a very difficult start in life. Here it is, and I hope you enjoy listening. Hi, Jenny.

[A]

Hi, mate.

[B]

Thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I didn't know what to expect today because actually your. Your home is not somewhere that's really online, it's not publicly available, and I feel massively flattered because I've got here today and you've shown me around the house and it is just phenomenal.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

And I don't say that lightly. I go to a lot of homes. This is just. It really blown me away. So I really appreciate it.

[A]

Gosh, thank you.

[B]

Well, the tour will be available to subscribers on Patreon. As always, I know you very sweetly are a subscriber yourself, so you'll be able to watch yourself.

[A]

Oh, God, I probably won't do that.

[B]

I'm dying to ask you about this house, but we always, you know, start at the beginning. So tell me where you grew up.

[A]

I grew up in Royal Leamington Spa, which is a very beautiful Georgian spa town. And I have family from Birmingham. So a facet of my family are Welsh Quakers and had built Birmingham. And then as that sort of dynasty was sort of fading, people still lived in and around the area. And so my parents, when they got married, lived first in Worcestershire in a tiny village, and then they moved to Leamington because it's sort of spitting distance to Edgbaston, where everybody else was. And so I kind of grew up in this extraordinarily beautiful place. And it. One of my first ever school projects when I was five was. And I was trying to find a book to show you was a. Was a treatise on the new built town, because I became really fascinated by the fact that the place was so complete and so beautifully laid out and that you could still find the original sort of 16th century cottages, of which there were four that were the original bit of the town. And then the whole thing had sort of expanded when spa water became popular. It had a very particular spa water with lots of magnesium in it and pump rooms and the bath houses which I used when I was older living on a boat. And so we grew up in this very beautiful, beautifully proportioned place. And I think it had an intense effect on me.

[B]

Go on, tell me.

[A]

Well, I mentioned I have this sort of synesthesic thing and I'm very affected by proportion. So being born and brought up in a beautiful place doesn't really prepare you for horribleness for the outside world. No. And so I remember once being in the back of the car with my dad and it was pre seat built, so I used to stand behind him with my arms around his neck while he was driving. We were driving to Stratford and I suddenly saw this row of 30s terraced houses and there was something about this oblique angle and the monotony of how they looked that really affected me and I threw up down the back of his neck. So.

[B]

You're kidding.

[A]

No, hang on.

[B]

So you had that Reaction to it

[A]

was so violent to the built environment. Yeah. Really dramatic. And he said very quietly, couldn't you have warned me? And I think. And I couldn't have done it, wasn't that the houses were horrible. There was just something kind of very unfamiliar and unsettling about the way. Do you know how they sort of stack terraced houses sort of obliquely down those roads in the 30s? They were very odd.

[B]

And it's important to say here, what you're not saying is it's not a snobbery thing, what you're saying. Because actually, this house here, it's not an enormous house, it's not a palace. The proportions of the house itself are pretty modest. We're in your studio here, which is very tall, but the house itself, the rooms are modest in scale. It's not a very big garden. No, but you were saying to me outside that there's something about the rectilinear nature of spaces, whether they're indoors or outdoors, that somehow calms you or settles you down. Can you explain that?

[A]

Yes. I mean, I don't know. It's instinctive. I think it's funny because it isn't to do with size and light and things. This is actually quite. You know, we're in a barn and it's quite. Quite dark. But the proportions of this house are very well considered. I mean, the architect of this house was a notable modernist and really knew what he was doing. So I think where there's that level of consideration, somehow it helps one feel comfortable and at peace. Whereas, you know, I don't know what the current house building that's going on in this country is doing to people. I don't like it. I don't like the way inadequate thinking and inadequate detailing is being pushed onto the population in this mania for having houses. You know, why not dignify people with something good? And there was that thought, you know, even the Victorians, I don't like the proportions of Victorian houses. But there was a sort of desire to dignify people with how they lived and where they lived.

[B]

I think you mentioned your synaesthesia.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Wish I hadn't now.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Can't describe it.

[B]

Yeah, go on. So, well, what's the definition of synesthesia?

[A]

Firstly, Gosh, I don't know. I mean, it's a sort of scrambling of the senses. There's probably a sensible way of describing it, but it affects different people differently. So you can hear music and get weird tastes in your mouth, or you can, you know, it's just strange dissonances with your sensory perception, really. But mine has a lot to do with color and space and proportion, so. And less to do with sound really. So I'm very sensitive to colour and I don't know, you might have noticed when we're going around the garden, there isn't tons of colour. I quite like green, I quite like form of things and I don't want too much. I can get overloaded quite quickly.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

If there's too much going on. Sound odd because you walk around the house and there's quite a lot going on, but it's quite considered and carefully put together.

[B]

Is it the fact that you have. It's under your control somehow?

[A]

Yes. And I think from really early in my life I've wanted to have control of my environment really. From when I was really small, I dreamt always of having my own house and my own space and peace. I think peace is very. Peacefulness is very important to me. And not too many people, not too much activity, really.

[B]

Does this relate to something from your childhood, do you think, A particular event or the way that you were brought up, or is it instilled in you from birth? What do you think?

[A]

Yeah, it's very difficult to describe my upbringing. It was extremely stimulating on lots of levels. It was also extremely traumatic. And both of my parents were war children, they're both from emigre families. So this is all a post rationalization for me. You know, I became a psychologist and you don't do that for the unmitigated joy of madness. You do it for a reason.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Sounds fair.

[A]

Yeah. And so I think quite a large proportion of my younger life was spent trying to get to grips with what on earth had been going on in the human element of my upbringing with my parents. My dad left when I was six and then my mother left when I was 13, so I was on my own from when I was 13. And that has a very particular effect on you, really. And I think I'm not being particularly articulate about this, but it's somehow difficult to know who you are when you're a child and there's a lot of traumatic stuff going on around you. And because I'm quite quiet, I just faded out of existence, I would say. And I spent most of my time hiding. I've spoken to a good friend of mine who's a historic buildings architect and we had very similar experiences as kids where you have a very volatile, kind of quite narcissistic mother, you become quiet and you Become observant. So I used to just sort of hide and look at things in great detail. So my favorite place in the house was under the piano and I could spend hours and hours and hours under there. Really, I found it very comforting. And I said to you outside, I still like to make places where you can go and kind of be completely still and quiet and not found.

[B]

Wow, that's such a powerful image. God, there's a lot to talk about. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, the idea of your childlike self being, you know. Yeah. Contained under a piano. That sounds a lot. I mean, so your father left when you were six. Have you had. Do you know why?

[A]

Yes, I mean, my mother was quite volatile actually. Who knows? Actually, I mean, you know, who really knows what goes on between the adults when you're a child? There were four of us kids. My little brother was nine months old and my oldest brother was 13 and I was six. And then I have a second brother who was 11. And I just imagine he'd had a terrible time. My dad, he'd been very, very ill as a young man during the war and I think probably he'd never felt like he'd lived. And so he ran off with a flame haired opera singer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. Who turned out, we believe, to be schizophrenic. So that didn't last very long. And I think he just wanted to. I don't know, I think he probably wanted to live a life that wasn't, you know, they got married very young. I think mum was 22 when they got married and had four kids. And then he wanted to be an inventor. He was an inventor?

[B]

Yeah. What did he invent?

[A]

He invented all sorts of things. He was also very musical. So he wrote various operas that were published and he worked for Massey Ferguson, he designed tractors. And he was desperate to be a farmer, but he came from a very academic family and my grandfather didn't want him. Legend has it that grandpa said, couldn't you at least be a dentist? Which is the dagger through the heart of somebody who wants to make things because making, you know, I mean, we're all right these days being makers. But it wasn't considered a suitable job, was it? I mean, it was very judgmental times, really. Anyway, so he made tractors while we lived together. I mean, he was extraordinary. So he would make a full working scale model of a tractor about this big for the Royal show on the kitchen table, very, very detailed. So I think I got into detail with him. So he was an engineer and he also invented an early word processor, which he was very excited about. He was saying, look at this, look at this. You can type and you can rub it out with a little liquid crystal display. I was going, wow, how amazing, how amazing. But couldn't you just be nice to us for a bit? So I think there was that dissonance. So I have a very low expectation of other human beings in terms of care or protection or anything like that. But I don't ultimately think it harmed me because I became very interested in other things. You know, I just became interested in light, landscape, music, the written word. I love reading and I started to. I think if you don't feel formed, well, formed as a human, you start to find your own way of finding out who you are. And I started mapping. So I think I've been mapping since I was very small. So to wit, the book about Leamington and wanting to do this, getting really involved as a five year old in the construction of the town I lived in is kind of quite a. Retrospectively, quite a weird thing to be interested in, but I found it very settling. I loved the fact that the Georgians had thought, well, if you know, the main parade runs here and it runs north, south, up this incline with a river at the bottom, and then radiating off from that, you have the lesser streets and the house sizes are proportioned to the configuration of this town. You must understand all this. You've brought up with it too, I imagine, and it becomes really fascinating. So my favorite book when I was little was the New Larousse Mythology. And I'd just read about all the mythologies. I can't remember any of it now, but I used to know them all inside out. And I thought, how interesting that, you know, the Sumerians and the Scandinavians have the same gods. They've got the same archetypes, they've all got the same personality archetypes running through them. And I suppose that's why ultimately I became a Jungian, because it made a lot of sense to me.

[B]

I see. So your surname. Blom.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where does that come from?

[A]

Well, it's Scandinavian. I've got a family tree upstairs which is longer than the table, and it's fascinating. So on the French side of my family, we all know each other. Everybody knows each other. Nobody ever stops talking. On the Scandinavian side, nobody knows each other and nobody ever started talking. But they wrote it all down. So that's the difference. Yeah.

[B]

So you said that you were 13 when your mum left?

[A]

She went back to France with my little brother, yeah.

[B]

Okay. So leaving you and me, Just you?

[A]

Just me?

[B]

Are you serious? On your own?

[A]

On my own.

[B]

Where were you living?

[A]

I lived with the neighbors, so I had this really weird displacement. So my neighbors were academics. My mother thought if somebody was an academic, that made everything all right because she'd always wanted to be one. But it didn't actually make everything all right. You can't leave a 13 year old girl alone in a bedsit in somebody else's house with no income and no food. It doesn't bode well. So I had quite a difficult time really. And I think through it I sort of realized that you, you have to take responsibility for yourself. And I didn't really trust other people very much, if I'm honest.

[B]

You must have had to grow up very quickly.

[A]

Yeah. Yes. And at the same time you're a very naive, you know, child. You know, I mean, I look at 13 year olds, I quite often look at 13 year old girls and marvel. You know, it's a very weird time in a child's life because you're not, you're not really a teenager yet, you know, you're not really hitting puberty properly, you know, or you might be, but you are very much a child.

[B]

Well, it's funny you say that because my eldest daughter, Indigo is 13.

[A]

Is she?

[B]

So I really, I, you know, seeing it through that lens is, is horrifying for me because Indigo is, as you described, she's, she's sort of discovering herself now. You know, I think in a way that's probably not happened before, but at the same time she still goes to bed cuddling her little rabbit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's the thing, you know, you're still a child.

[A]

You are. And, and all these things that are surging through your body and, and coming at you are a lot to process, an awful lot to process. So I was having to sort of get myself up, go to school. I was very badly bullied because people don't like kids who are odd. And so I was odd, you know. And then I discovered that a lot of people would say that they were round at my house to their parents so that they could get away with going and doing whatever they were doing. And, and I just, I found, you know, I mean, for a quiet child, I became very quiet really and sort of sank into nothing. And then I, they didn't come back for ages, not ages. And this was pre mobile phones. There was no, no communication. So I got a job at the weekend. So I survived on my school lunches. I went to A liberal arts school. So that was also kind of. I mean, had I been in a more kind of normal school, perhaps somebody might have said something. But this was the 70s, so nobody was talking about anything to do with how you look after your children. That came later. But if you can imagine anything that you can, anything that your imagination might describe as going wrong for a 13 year old on their own, it went wrong. So I had a pretty horrific time of it. And then when my mother came back, I was 16 and I moved to live with a friend of mine and she went absolutely postal. I mean, she lost it because she was very controlling. So that sort of thing of being very controlling and very neglectful is a weird dichotomy that I've never really kind of got to grips with. I mean, I have now, but. And it's funny because I started thinking about, well, why is she the way she is? And I think it was a lot to do with her abandonment because her parents sent her to England when she was 6 and didn't see her again until she was 18.

[B]

Are they still alive, your parents?

[A]

No, no, no.

[B]

Did you ever ask your mum why she left you at that age?

[A]

You know, there were some conversations that just weren't worth having. And you know, we were very weirdly, we were very close and at the same time we're completely different people. And she's quite a damaging person to be around. And it's funny cause the Rosalie de Merrick paintings that I was showing you in the house, Rosalie de Merrick was that kind of mother. And when I read her daughter's book about growing up with her, I thought, I'm never going to have to write this down because Julia's done such an absolutely standout job of describing these people who are fascinating. I mean, my mother was fascinating in a million different ways. And if you met her, you would agree. So it's very difficult to only see it through a prism of damage and misery because there was so much more to it than that.

[B]

And yeah, one of the things that's so interesting about this is that you started off by describing growing up in very grand, beautiful surrounds most certainly, you know, and on the, you know, it's incredible, isn't it, that on the surface can be so at odds with what's happening underneath.

[A]

Oh, totally perfect table manners. I know which knife and fork to use. You know, middle. She liked to say, upper middle class standards will get you a long way. Okay, so she was quite a snob.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, but our family was on a, on A downward trajectory, you know, in terms of everything. And when dad went, he took all the money. So, you know, she was a redoubtable woman. I mean, she suddenly out of nowhere went from cocktail parties and couture to driving a butcher's van and turning our house, our beautiful Georgian house, became a guest house. So we were suddenly sort of surrounded by people we'd never met before. And I found it all very destabilizing, but I just went quiet. And I remember reading about Ariadne's thread and I remember thinking, right, that's me. I've just got to fix my. I remember I was quite small and I was thinking, all I need to do is grow up because then I'll be able to make my own decisions and my own choices and then it'll be fine. So I'm lucky that I had that streak and that's what I've done. And you know, I come from a singular family on all sides. They're non conformist socialists, you know, the Danish lot, the same, you know, the very. You have to make your own path in life kind of people. So I don't have a close family of immediate human beings now, but I feel very much part of this collective of people who've had to do extraordinary things with themselves, you know, and I really like that. It's kind of comforting.

[B]

As you were talking, I was thinking about a conversation I had with Julia Samuel, the psychotherapist, and she was saying how I suppose a third of emotion sits on the surface and two thirds sits kind of underneath, which I thought was a really interesting way of looking at it, like an iceberg. And I have a really clear picture of you, as you say, learning to conform, learning to have the manners and do things in the right way. But also such a complex inner life you must have had.

[A]

I've got a very big inner life.

[B]

I bet you have.

[A]

Yeah. And yeah, I mean I'm a. I'm a true introvert, really. And I think people find me a bit odd. I think people have always. I've got used to the fact that people find me odd.

[B]

Do you think that they do? How? Why do you. How do they show that?

[A]

Well, maybe it's. It could be me, you know, I don't really have a great deal of understanding of how society works, how people hang out with each other. You know, I've never had. I think being bullied makes you wary of people.

[B]

Do you have close friends?

[A]

Yes, but not. I don't see people a lot, you know, Mark and I Are very close and we see each other a lot and we're quite similar. You know, we don't need a great deal of external stimulation. Yeah, no. I mean, I've got some really amazing, fascinating good friends, but I'd rather have a deep and long lasting relationship. One of my best friends is an artist called Cathy Haynes. She's extraordinary. We've been through extraordinary things together. We've known each other for 30 years and we don't see each other that often, but it's very deep, unprofound.

[B]

Okay, so the depth of the relationship is an important element.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, for me.

[B]

I get that, I get that, yeah. Okay, well, so let's move on to. You mentioned you touched on it, but you went into psychology, psychotherapy, didn't you, initially, is that right? Professionally?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, because I was on my own, so from such a young age I couldn't do anything in the normal route. So I've always worked. I've been working since my Saturday jobs when I was 13. And then I didn't go off the rails. I've been seeking things all my life, you know. And so I was a good old fashioned stoner for quite a long time. That was my first career, you might say. And then I was doing a bit of plumbing with a friend of mine and I decided that I needed a trade. So I thought, I'll go to. I'll go and learn HND plumbing, then I can always have a job. I needed a portable skill, I felt. So I signed up to go to the local fe to do plumbing. And when I got there, my mother was still in France at this point. They went, oh, no, no, no, you're not, your name's not on this course. And I said, well, these are, it must be. And they went, no, no, no, you're leave it with us. Oh yeah, no, you're, you're doing drama. I said, what? No, I'm not. I'm doing plumbing. No, no, it says here on your forms. And then I noticed the unmistakable hand of my mother who had altered the course. No daughter of mine is going to be a plumber. And she signed me up to the drama, theater studies.

[B]

Well, that is quite narcissistic, isn't it?

[A]

Yep, yep, very. So I did it and during it I couldn't act. You know, if you haven't got a sense of who you are, you can't pretend to be somebody else, I think is the fundamental thing. So I got very involved in doing all the sets. I did the sets, the lighting and the Sound. And I realized that I very much like making the environment in which other people perform. And I didn't know at the time, but that is actually what clearly I'm doing now. But also I wanted to do art and drama therapy, I thought, but at that stage you had to have an arts degree, a science degree, and then do a further thing to become a therapist. Well, I mean, I just couldn't. I hadn't got any money. I hadn't, you know, I was living in my flat with my friend Ian. Another very important place for us both, really. So it started a long old journey, really. And lighting and sound and sets, that was fine. From there I went to live in France. From France I came back here, then I opened. Then I moved to London and opened a shop, had a deli. Then I met my ex and we bought our first house, which I've still got in South London.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then his ex wife, she was an ex addict and she was working with ex addicts. And we met and she was French, and she said, oh, Jeannie should be a. You should be a therapist. I said, oh, yeah? And she said, yeah, yeah. I went to this course, but it. It's for me, but you could do it. And so I went, yeah, okay. And I went off and I ended up joining this training and I became a transpersonal psychologist and psychotherapist. And that took me nine years. And at the same time, she'd also got a job working at this charity in Brixton, working with people with psychosis. And she hate this job, but it'd be really good for you. So Brigitte, in her extraordinary way, actually just put me exactly where I needed to be. It was quite extraordinary, actually.

[B]

So I see what you needed, though.

[A]

Yeah. And that's happened to me a lot. I mean, things like that have happened a lot. And I think it's really important to keep your eye out for people oneself and help people in that way, actually, because everybody's looking for something and not necessarily clear on it.

[B]

That makes a lot of sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So how long were you a therapist for?

[A]

Well, I wasn't in the traditional sense. I worked in this charitable, residential, charitable trust for men with schizophrenia and PTSD and ocd. The real thing. I find it very difficult when people talk about mental health problems. Like it's having a Veruca.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Because it isn't.

[B]

So this. Yeah, this sounds pretty hardcore.

[A]

This was hardcore, yeah. And we had three residential houses in Brixton. And I've always felt that, I mean, you need to Be in it. You know, you really need to be in it. And I think anyone who goes into that line of work definitely has stuff to sort out for themselves. And I think the really critical thing is own it, Know it, you know, know it. Know the difference between what you're experiencing and what the other person is experiencing. Cause I think there's a lot of very unfortunate transference that goes on.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And so one of my good skills was I was very good at hiring people that weren't mad because quite a lot of crazy people apply for jobs in places. You know, I mean, the thing you are, you're attracted to the thing that you are, if you like. So you have to be quite vigilant in all of these childcare or mental health or any of these things. You have to be careful. So I did that for 12 years.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And I started off as a part timer and I became co director. It was amazing. I loved it. Absolutely loved it.

[B]

And from there you pivoted to landscape?

[A]

Yes, I did. And I did because, well, I mean, it's very difficult to describe a life because so many things happen simultaneously. And at the same time I was doing that, the majority of my friends were gay and the majority of them had HIV and full blown aids. And so Ian, who I mentioned, who I was at drama college with, he became very ill. We were very close. Terry, our other best friend, he turned up on the doorstep where I was working one day having a full blown breakdown because he'd been diagnosed and he hid under my desk. There's quite a lot of hiding under things in my life. I don't hide under things anymore. And I had to hoik him out, stick him in the ambulance and drive him off to Lighthouse and get him looked after. And he died shortly after. Then Ian became very, very sick and so did his partner. And, you know, it was very stigmatizing. And so I was the only person who knew they were both ill because his partner was very much in the public eye and didn't want it known. And so that was quite difficult. So, yeah, that was all going on. My partner had become a drug addict, unbeknownst to me, and I was running a charity with 40 schizophrenic guys. And it became quite a lot. And so I plowed on through it. All my friends died, all my four closest friends died, and my four pets died within months of each other, which was quite a lot. And then I sort of suddenly thought, actually, I don't feel right. So John and I went on holiday to The Picos de Europa in Spain. And I had a prophetic dream which I wrote about in my book. And this little. I was in a stadium full of people, it was a Madonna concert actually. And everyone was screaming and somebody was trying. This little person was trying to say something to me and. And I said, what is it? And they said, please can I be a gardener? And so I thought, bloody hell. And I woke up and said to John, I just had this mad dream, you know, please can I. And he said, well, why don't you just do it then? And after that, everything just sort of fell into place and it all happened. And so I went back home, handed my notice in, which was kind of a big deal because I was director and became a gardener.

[B]

Wow, that's extraordinary.

[A]

Yeah, well, it's as mad as that.

[B]

How would you explain. Because you've done a lot of work around, you know, nature and therapy kind of combined. How do you personally explain that link between how a landscape can make someone feel better?

[A]

I mean, one of the things that really struck me was when Ian was ill. And one of the reasons I still do a lot of work at Chelsea and Westminster, it's a phenomenal hospital. And so the big AIDS ward was in Chelsea and Westminster, which was a new hospital in the early late 80s, I think it opened in 1990. So roundabout then. And one of the things was that the room he was in was. It's very nicely situated, that hospital, because it's in Fulham and it's very close. It's not high, it's not a big, high building and it's a modern building, so it had good windows. And he was lying in bed sort of parallel to the crown of a big sycamore tree. So you got this sort of beautiful sky with all the. You could see the sky and you could see all the birds flying, you know, these flocks of sparrows and things, and the wind moving the sycamore tree and everything. He was lying, I mean, literally skeletally, unto death in bed. And just that thing of being able to see the non prescriptive nature of nature, you know, the light changing, the clouds changing, you can't predict it, you can't tell what's coming next. And going back to the garden outside, there's something about the window frame, the framing of that with the physical structure of the hospital. And then with this moving life going on outside, I think something very profound happens to a human being. And I notice it now because we've just built a garden for the ICU that people want to go and die in the garden. They want to go and be in the garden that we've built. It's inside. It's an indoor garden. But there's something about it, just knowing that this is a bigger thing than you, that it's. It needs nurturing, it needs care and all of that sort of thing. It just seems to have a very profound effect.

[B]

Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's, it's. It's the idea, isn't it, that we're somehow part of. We're a living organism like plants are, and we're part of that ecosystem and, you know, we will sort of, in the end, will just kind of decompose into the ground.

[A]

Yes. There's sort of safety in mortality somehow for me. I said to you earlier, my mother thought she was immortal like Ursula Andress in she.

[B]

It doesn't surprise me. Now you tell me more about that.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, well, you know, we know you're going to live forever, mom, but in the unlikely event that something happens, what should we do with your mortal remains? So.

[B]

But you also said that you do not feel like that. So how do you feel about mortality?

[A]

I feel fine about it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, I feel fine about it. I've had three near misses, so I kind of, you know, I mean, we go to sleep at night, we're unconscious. You might never wake up again. Would you know the difference? I don't think you would. So just enjoy it, you know, I love being alive, but. Yeah, I'm not going to panic about not being.

[B]

Yeah. We've got to talk about this house. Oh, yeah, tell me about this place. When does it date from, actually, this house, first of all.

[A]

Oh, the Barn is from 1593, which was the year Richard III was first performed in London, which we quite like the thought of.

[B]

How amazing, isn't it? Yeah. Excuse the quick interruption. Firstly, I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast. The response to Homing has been far beyond anything I've expected. I've really, really appreciated all the messages of support I've had and the many people who've taken the time to tell me how much they connect with the show. A special thank you, of course, to everyone who signed up on Patreon. Those memberships genuinely do help keep the lights on and make it possible for me to continue creating the podcasts and filming the house tours. Secondly, as the audience continues to grow, I'm beginning to look for a small number of partners for the show. If you're involved with a brand that shares Homing's interests in design, nature, well being and the way we live. I would really love to hear from you. You'll find my contact details in the show notes. Thank you very much. And back to the conversation. I described it earlier on as having some quite small rooms and what I mean by that is there's an intimacy to it and I suppose it does remind me a little bit of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge. And that's partly because you have so much art on the walls and also, you know, small maquettes on surfaces. You know, you're obviously great collectors. So tell me about the art and why that's important to you.

[A]

Oh, it's so important. I collected a few things before Mark and I met. And then, as I said to you, we didn't want to live when we decided we were going to live together, which sounds like we decided it, but we'd actually bought this house before we'd ever lived together. So as we drove up the motorway here to here, we thought, well, what are we doing? Because we hadn't actually discussed it.

[B]

So you bought. So you bought the house before you decided to live together?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's brilliant.

[A]

Yeah. I think we'd sort of obviously cottoned onto the fact that we were going to have a go, but. But. And then suddenly some of the stuff from my house in London made sense here. And I knew Kettle's Yard, but also, as I said, Louisiana in, in Denmark. And when I lived in Denmark, I lived in a modern house with white painted brick and it's that Danish thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then if you think about it, places like Snape, you know, all of that kind of runs through me. My family were involved in Snape Maltings and things like that. And also Coventry. When I was a kid, Coventry was being built after the war and the cathedral. And I remember going over there and just like really not being able to. I couldn't bear it. I sort of couldn't bear it. I sang in a choir and I'd have to go and sing in Coventry Cathedral about once a month. And there was something about it. It's so strong and it's so intentional. And that Jacob Epstein angel is, you know, it's quite a lot for a kid, really, but there was something about the completeness and that, that it's really interesting how that sort of rises, you know. And Marx had a similar experience, thanks to your family, really, of the library in Ilford and places like that, these modernist things, the barbican all of it kind of sinks into you. And there was something in here, in this house that we both recognized and it just set us off on this art buying spree. And nothing cost very much, I hasten to add. You know, like, he's a very good sleuth. Like, we've got these Ras Rasmussen sculptures up there. They're the first aluminium. Spun aluminium sculpture.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah, they're amazing. So he finds this extraordinary stuff.

[B]

So it sounds like Mark is into it from a kind of academic standpoint as well.

[A]

You know, if you think his career in music was finding talent, you know, he's an A and R man. So he's been finding. And what is that? You know, he's looking for the thing in somebody else that is going to make. Make them a star.

[B]

So who did he work for?

[A]

He found the Spice Girls.

[B]

Did he really?

[A]

Yeah, in a pub in Essex. Natalie Imbruglia. He figured out having a really beautiful girl saying lying naked on the floor might be a good idea.

[B]

Wasn't she in a soap opera?

[A]

She was in something like a Hoping Oil or something. But then he and Phil Thornalli made that song Torn for her. So he would do things like that, you know, find people and max them out, really.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Cheryl Cole. Heard of her, Really? I mean, all sorts. I don't really know. We don't talk about it very much. And then by the time we met, we met in a. Singing in a choir that I'd been going to for ages, an acapella choir which is run by Brian Eno. So because I sing. And then Mark turned up one day and I just thought he was a fun, entertaining person and the rest is history. And I don't know, there's something. He's just very creative. So I think if he follows a seam of something so it's less academic, the academic bit almost follows it, because he then does have a kind of academic streak of following it up and learning a lot. And then that will make connections. And he's gone down some very interesting little avenues and alleyways.

[B]

What's the thrust of the art collection? I mean, what are the parameters?

[A]

The parameters are there's quite a healthy dose of English surrealism, which is nobody's been particularly interested in, but now they are okay. He's sort of at the vanguard of things because quite a lot of the stuff he's found we bought for next to nothing because we haven't got lots of money. And now it's really hit some sort of zeitgeist. So really, I Think it's from the end of the Second World War up to pop art.

[B]

Is our region mainly British or all sorts?

[A]

A lot of British, quite a lot of emigre and quite a lot of women. We've discovered, you know, a surprising amount. So now we're going to do a book.

[B]

Why not a book about the art

[A]

collection still forming that. Yeah.

[B]

I'd love to ask you about the garden. And it's not a big plot, it seems to me it's about psychological safety. That's what I took from it. And I think, obviously hearing your story now makes a huge amount of sense, but just talk us through that. I mean, for people that sort of haven't seen it pictured, how would you describe how it upholds safety?

[A]

Oh, well, safety can be structured, so I think it's a highly structured space. So it's a barnyard. So the barn has this square yard in front of it, 30 meters by, I think 35 by 35. So it's not huge. And we have lowish stone walls around it on all sides. One element of safety is being able to see what's coming. So I'm a bit of a kind of medievalist in that sense. You know, you need to be able to see your attacker coming marauding over the. But I've got quite a lot of my lexicon from French medieval villages, really, because they built. Well, in the medieval period, everybody built in a kind of way that kept you secure. So it is in the build. So you have these low walls, which means you can see what's coming. It's also quite nice because that's not claustrophobic. So there's a sort of solar plexus height, which is probably about 1.2 meters for most adults, which I think is the optimum. If you can protect your solar plexus, you can protect yourself.

[B]

What a brilliant rule. I love that.

[A]

Yeah, that's it. So you can see, which means you can react, and then you can also sink down. If you sit down, then, you know, you're in a kind of protected space. So a lot of it is the physical structure. And then I think there's something about plants, you know, the proximity being inside plants. I mean, the idea of a garden where there's a lawn with stuff around the edge does my head in. Because why would you want to sit in a kind of blast zone of grass? You know, really, I want to be in. In amongst the plants and everything that they've got to offer. You know, the bees, the smells, the brushing against things. You know, it's so nice.

[B]

That's amazing. It's brilliant. And you've got a strip of water as well, which you describe like a moat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What does that do?

[A]

Well, you know, water is life. We have to have water. We've got three lots of water in the garden. I always have water wherever I go, either in a controlled way or I'm not very good with tech, so I'm not very keen on fountains and techy things like that. But, you know, a massive. Like that great big copper. Just fill it with water. And then I. I got a 30 quid solar aerator from Amazon. That's enough for me. And then the other one at the front, I've got this little tiny fountain thing which I bought for 50 quid from the local pond shop. So I'm not a snob, you know. I mean, it's whatever it'll take to make something work. And then I've got that great big old stone trough at the front which looks quite barney. And an old guy went past and he said, oh, I remember that. He said, I'm glad you kept that from the original barn. I said, yeah, it was important, wasn't it? Had turned up on a truck about three days earlier. But it's a kind of quite a nice thing for him to say because it feels, you know, I like everything to sort of settle into being appropriate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Somehow.

[B]

How do you describe the relationship between the house and the garden?

[A]

Oh, it's really important because I thought for quite a while about it and, you know, we've lived here for 10 years and I only built the garden last year, so this is its first year, so don't judge it too harshly. It's a baby.

[B]

Yeah, but it's a very structured baby.

[A]

Yeah, structured baby. That's it. Well, I mean, really, it's just some simple mathematical rules, you know, and taking the proportions from the old barn doors and dropping them down, I always find something in the architecture is the key to the structure.

[B]

Tell me something about that, then. Okay, so the height of the doors,

[A]

the width and the height is the proportion. So if I'm doing a terrace on a house, I will take the elevation and drop it flat. The proportions of the elevation and just drop it flat. So my terraces often look huge, but then they're very big and livable and they always feel proportionate.

[B]

So it's almost like a shadow.

[A]

Yes, it's like a shadow. And then they're big enough to put trees in and furniture on and, you know, they're generous at that point. As well. But I always find a proportion on the building and then the little terraces out here mirror really the scale of the rooms inside. So I wanted there to be a familiarity. I had a client in the States once and she, she had a few things that I enjoyed. Like she always. She had one type of clock and she would put it wherever she needed a clock in the house so that you didn't have to then register a different kind of clock.

[B]

Really.

[A]

Yeah. And it was, it. It was weirdly satisfying. You know, we used to talk a lot about this sort of thing. I have great clients. I have really great clients. They're very unusual people.

[B]

Well, I bet you do, because you,

[A]

the majority of them are. Yeah.

[B]

Well, you just. I mean this in the best way. You've described yourself earlier as someone that you see yourself sitting slightly outside of the norm somehow. And so I think when you feel that way, you inevitably attract other people that are a bit non conformist.

[A]

I think that's true. I think that's true. And also I'm very conscious of the fact I'm very private and with the kind of job that I do. You're going right into the absolute core of other people's lives, really. Like, who are you? How do you live? How do you want to live? So what I'm doing isn't commodifying their land or whatever. I'm really doing something quite different, I think, more transformative.

[B]

Do you have any other rules like that you talked about dropping the doors or the facade down? Rules.

[A]

I don't know. I'm not very rule based, maybe the wrong word. I'm very thorough. So I think one of the things when I take on a project that probably might surprise people is I'm not looking to produce a vignette of something in the space. I need to take on the whole thing and do it really from the inside out. So I need to look at everything, the boundaries, the trees, the. The landscape. I mean, I say I had a bit of a moment the first time I got a digger bucket into the ground and started changing levels. And I got this kind of weird frisson and I thought, well, no, this is me. I'm a big changer of land. The things that I do are massive. The scale that I work on is monumental. And I think that surprises people because I'm quite quiet about my work. I don't think they realize sometimes the huge scale of it. But I'm happy in that environment. So I can bring about enormous change. And it is always enormous change to the Good, because it's amazing how people will change land without thinking about it. So I've just had to restore a whole load of land ponds that were sort of hacked into a very beautiful hillside in the 80s, and they were so ugly. I mean, it was like somebody had done them with a digger bucket and just sort of mashed the banks in these awful kind of railway embankment kind of revetments all around them. And we've just made them much, much better. So I think it's that sort of. That's a healing thing, I suppose, is like, think about it, do it once, do it properly and do it thoroughly.

[B]

So this is a bit reductive in some ways, because it's an obvious link to make, but I think it's one we do have to make. And I'd love your thought on it. The upbringing that you had with very unpredictable care, to put it mildly. How do you feel that that feeds into your work and the way that you try and manipulate the land like you were talk and give structure to the land and reshape nature in that way.

[A]

I don't know if that is reductive. It's quite hard to answer. It just matters a lot. You know, I think I was probably. I was quite put out by the treatment that I received when I was small and I haven't got my own children. I. I mean, for many reasons. But also I think you carry a fear, if you are badly brought up, you carry a fear of passing it on or not being able to look after things well. And I think that is something that has challenged me is the fear of not doing things well. And so I think in doing the job that I do, I do it very well. I mean, you know, it's just important. And it's a respect thing, you know, it's a respect for the land. I mean, my. My family on this, in this country were Quakers and Unitarians, and they do sort of din this stuff into you like a stick of rock, you know, do as you would be done by. And there's a Unitarian thing about protecting the earth on which you tread, you know, and it sort of sticks in your head. They're very simple rules of engagement, if you like, and they matter. They do matter.

[B]

When I spoke with Dan Pearson, he talked about how when he was younger, he felt that the natural world was somehow controllable and behaved in a way that he understood in comparison to humans, who are much more unpredictable.

[A]

Yeah, I'd agree with him. I've had that conversation with him too, because we used to work together. Yeah, Years ago. Yes. I mean, I totally agree with him. And it is, you know, it's a bit like having a pet, you know, they're only ever going to be nice to you. You know, it's the only reason people have dogs, isn't it, because they just really like you. And I think nature and gardens, and there's just something very. The transaction that you have of caring for a garden. But there is something in the link that you have, which is the thing that I was always scared that I didn't have because of my upbringing, that you could neglect something. I mean, you can't neglect it. If you start growing plants, you can't neglect them, you can't leave them to die in a pot. The something will be pulling you out in the early hours of the morning to go make sure they're all right. It's a very interesting. And that's why I think it works very well for gardening and ptsd, actually, and for all kinds of serious. You know, I mean, I used to get the most. I had the most terrible PTSD when I was young. I mean, really terrible and terrible, terrible panic attacks. And unless you've had terrible panic attacks, you don't really know what they're like,

[B]

you know, what sort of age is this?

[A]

Oh, I mean, from when I got left, really, I would. I mean, you know, I was borderline psychotic for probably the first year, and that's why I understand psychosis so well. And that was my enthusiasm for working with it. I didn't find it frightening at all. I found it a language that you needed to learn. You know, I remember a consultant psychiatrist saying to me, oh, you can't do a thing with them other than medicate them. And I just. I saw his fountain pen on his desk and I wanted to stab him with it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I think, you absolute ass. How can you sit there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And say something as sweeping and stupid as that? You know, you have to learn the language. And actually, funnily enough, that's another thing, like with architecture. I remember reading an architectural monograph when I was about 15, thinking, what the hell is this language? You know, this is gibberish. What are they talking about? And then I realized, it is another language, you know, so you just need to learn these other languages. Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I've learned architecture, learnt people, learnt plants. It's not bad.

[B]

Well, another big theme here, of course, is loss.

[A]

Well, yes. I mean. Well, I think I sort of hinted at it earlier. The thing is, for me, it's been an Enormous motivator. What do you do with grief? So I've had all these losses, you know, starting with dad disappearing when I was little. Then my generation was a solidamide generation. So all the way through school, kids were dying. I mean, there weren't that many kids who had false thalidomide symptoms, but there were other symptoms of thalidomide, like terrible asthma and things like that. So my really good friend at school, Sam Bruce, died of an asthma attack, you know, and you just think, blimey, you know, and then John Gerrish died when we were 14. So kids dying, dying, dying, dying. And you don't expect it when you're little and it makes you feel old, like Methuselah, you know, because what do you do with that? And then I'm the AIDS generation as well. So, you know, when, when everybody was in their early 30s, late 20s, early 30s, everybody dying, you know, I don't know, it changes you. And I think the AIDS that, you know, what came out of everybody dying of AIDS for me was a complete reinvention and then needing to really boot it into this new way of life. And I think that's how I process grief. I do something. Yeah.

[B]

And are you happy to talk about your brother?

[A]

Yeah, my oldest brother.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, we were very, very close. And he. Oh, God. I mean, what. I mean, you just think, what a waste, you know, What a waste. Don't smoke, okay? Yeah, don't smoke. It's really not worth it.

[B]

So what did he die from then?

[A]

He died of lung cancer at 53. My dad died at 53. There's a long tradition of. My grandfather died at 53. So you either die at 53 or you plow on. Basically, in my family, I've made it over the dangerous hump.

[B]

Do you smoke?

[A]

No. I used to. I used to smoke like a chimney, but I gave up. I wrote myself a note that said, cat food, fags, milk. And I looked at it, I thought, what kind of lunatic needs to write down, you can't, you know, you've got to feed the cat, you need milk for tea. And if you're an addict, you don't need to write down the thing you're addicted to. So I thought, maybe I'm not an addict. And that was it. I never smoked again. Bonkers.

[B]

That was it.

[A]

I mean, I literally never did. And I was a chain smoking puffer,

[B]

you know, but that's presumably because obviously there's a physiological reason why we are addicts. But there's also, of course the underlying reason often is a social one or to do with belonging or, you know, what was going on in your life at that time.

[A]

Well, I'll tell you what it was for me. I gave up smoking when I finally moved to London. I'd moved to London several times. I was living in squats in Bethnal Green and various other things. And then I finally moved to London after I came back from France and opened. When we opened the shop and I was living above the shop, and it was the first time that I was sort of dislocated from the society that I had had in Leamington. And I was sort of tired of it all. I was tired of this sort of, you know, world where everybody becomes quite homogenous and conforms to whatever little group they've got into. And I realized I smok partly because of the difficulties of my earlier life. I was always terrified that I was going to say something that I shouldn't. And so smoking was way of kind of almost literally having your hands over your mouth. And I was quiet anyway. But it sort of like if you're constantly putting a fag in your mouth, you are literally muffling yourself. And I just thought, I'm not going to bother. I'm not going to bother anymore. And I didn't. And nobody knew me. There was something kind of. There's a terrible. You know, I've been very lonely. There have been chunks of my life which have been very lonely, but in that you actually have the chance to change, you know, so I'm not frightened of changing, and I'm not frightened of being on my own. And it. It allowed me to completely transform myself and become myself, I think. Really?

[B]

How interesting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What age is that, then?

[A]

I suppose it started in my. You know, by the time I got to my mid-20s, I'd been on my own for, you know, 12 years or something, 13 years. So, yeah, around about then. And it took a while. It takes a while to build yourself up.

[B]

That's such an interesting description of. Of smoking. I've not heard that before, but it makes so much sense when you say that. It was a sort of, you know, you can't say the wrong thing when you got a fag in your mouth. Did you go through childhood thinking that you could easily say the wrong thing? And the stakes of that were very high?

[A]

They were very high stakes. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm an abused child. I mean, I might as well say it. I'm a very badly abused child. And therefore you have the whole load of the Silence that everybody else requires of you. Because you could be the undoing of everything, you know, and that's an enormous weight to carry. An enormous weight to carry.

[B]

Do you mean if you share your experiences with outsiders, is that what you mean?

[A]

Yeah. Or with anyone. Yeah. And you're not allowed to, you know, you're not. So the whole, you know, being demonized, if you're. If you're the. The person who has had abuse perpetrated upon them, you become dangerous to the people who've done it or who've colluded in it. And that's why I was so angry about the Jimmy Savile thing, because I was thinking, well, everybody knew what Jimmy Savile was. What about all those other fuckers at the BBC protecting their pensions and protecting the world and protecting themselves? You know, they showed no bravery, they showed no support for the kids. They showed nothing. It's disgusting. And they got away with it. And really, it is all about collusion and not telling the truth. And so I'm a great truth speaker. I can see that. And I think that's the thing with mental health. I'm really anti taboo as well. There shouldn't be any taboos. You should be able to out things, you know, and speak about them, not to punish other people. It's not about that. It's about opening the world up and having some honesty in it.

[B]

As we move to the end of this conversation, I just wanted to bring it briefly to this idea, this word. Homing. Yeah, of course, there's the bricks and mortar of a home, but it's really about one's internal state, you know, and that's what's fascinated me about this conversation. The two things are related and they're related to landscape as well. But I think, you know, you're someone that clearly grew up with a chronic lack of safety, which is really tough. And I think it's very obvious from you, describing your panic disorder and so on, that you didn't feel at home in yourself. How could you have done.

[A]

No, I mean, you dislocate, you know, at that point. You know, that's why I understand psychosis, because I've lived it. And you need to be able to kind of re. Enter your physical being and walk in safety. And that really is something. I feel extremely lucky that I've been born with the resources within me to do that, because a lot of people don't have that.

[B]

Well, you are an amazing story of triumph over adversity, really. Yeah. No, you really are. And I'd love to ask you, how do you feel? Do you feel at home in yourself now?

[A]

Oh, yeah. Really?

[B]

And you know, you can't possibly describe this in a sentence, but what would you say? What are the main things that have contributed to that?

[A]

Well, I'll tell you. I can tell you very easily. I think the fact that. That even though I only had my father for a really short period of time, he loved me and I loved him. And I think when you've experienced love, unconditional love and real love like that, you don't forget it. And it is unbelievably sustaining, actually.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so one of the reasons that I wanted to go and do the work that I did when I worked with the guys, not thanks to Brigitte, I got kicked into it, but having got there, I thought all of these guys that I'm working with, because it was just men, have got that same dissonance. And we all. I mean, it sounds absolutely mad, but we really loved each other. We had the most brilliant time together. And that, I think, is like they're drops of gold, you know, and they can get you through all sorts of stuff.

[B]

So you think it's human connection.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Ultimately a feeling of belonging.

[A]

Yeah, Ultimately, if you've experienced it, it gives you. There will be part of you that is whole and then you can build on it. Yeah.

[B]

Did you see your father after the age of six? Very much.

[A]

Not very often. Not very often. You know, I mean, really. Certainly not to excuse his behavior, but I think it would have been very, very difficult for him to come back. He would have had to get past the fury of my mother and the disappointment and the hurt. And so who's going to want to walk back into that if they're not a very strong person? Which he wasn't. And then, weirdly, when she came back from France, they got back together and I found that really difficult. And then he died. So that was a whole other kind of weird cataclysm. And you just think, bloody hell, I've had enough of this. Eventually I'm going to go and do something else.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

Yeah. Psychodramas. Yeah.

[B]

My last question for you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's a very special home you have here. And I just wondered if you could put into words for me what it means to you, this place.

[A]

Oh, I just love it. I love living here with Mark. We wake up every day and just can't believe our luck, you know, because we both created ourselves out of nothing, really. And it just seems like it's just brilliant. I mean, it's really nice to be able to share it with you. This is the right kind of way to share it, I think.

[B]

In a way, I think it is because I think what you've described today as you're showing me around, everything has a story behind it. It's not about. It's not about the way it looks. There's so many layers of meaning here.

[A]

Well, I think everybody who's painted in this house is from that period of history, is. They're all people who are undergoing a crazy amount of change. So all of the stories, you know, are similar. You know, war trauma, you know, trying to make sense of a new world, trying to be modern, trying to be, you know, what, after a war, what do you do? So I think even though that that sounds traumatic, it kind of isn't. It's sort of liberating, you know. So, I mean, I'm. I feel. I feel lucky to have had a crazy life, really.

[B]

I'm glad you really could. There could be another outcome from that. But, yeah. Julie, what a great conversation. It's, you know, thank you for being so open and honest and.

[A]

Well, thanks.

[B]

It's been a very memorable morning.

[A]

Oh, thank you. Well, likewise.

[B]

Thanks very much, folks, for listening along today. I really enjoyed talking to Ginny. If you enjoyed it too, and you can spare a second to leave us a review, I'd be very grateful for that because it helps other people find the podcast as well. We've got some really fantastic guests coming up in the next next few months, so if you haven't already subscribed to the show, please tap on the follow button on Apple or Spotify and new episodes will appear in your feed as soon as they come out. This episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks all and talk to you very soon. Bye bye.