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- [00:01]
A
I never wanted what other people wanted. I always wanted kind of the opposite. If anything, almost maybe on purpose. Everyone used to say, how can you cut it open? And I always used to just think, well, why wouldn't you want to skin an animal? Why wouldn't you want to see what was underneath the skin? Everyone in our lives has been through this building, and we've rented it out for shoots as well. We had baby reindeer. Some of that was filmed here. I wanted to sort of accumulate these things. None of those things are very important. And all that's important is the people in your life. It's just family. I mean, as long as I can take those three along with me, I think I could make a nice home anywhere. Hello.
- [00:44]
B
Welcome to Homing, the podcast that explores the importance of home in shaping who we are. I'm Matt Gibbard. Firstly, thank you so much for all the positive feedback on the Chris Packham episode. Chris was so insightful and honest that it's very hard to know how to follow on from that. But this episode is one I'm really proud of, I must say, and I'm very hopeful it will capture your imagination and interest in the same way. Today I'm talking to the amazing Polly Morgan. Polly is an artist who's particularly well known for working with taxidermy. I remember a BBC series years ago called what Do Artists Do All Day? And it showed her nonchalantly plucking dead birds out of freezers ready to be.
- [01:26]
C
Dissected and turned into artworks.
- [01:29]
B
Her lack of squeamishness is explained by growing up in the English countryside, where she lived with a menagerie of animals and helped her parents take the dead goats to the abattoir. In her 20s, she worked in a bar in Shoreditch, where she became friends with the golden generation of artists known as the Ybas. Despite not having any artistic training, she soon found herself exhibiting alongside them. We recorded this podcast at her family home in a converted pub in Camberwell. The house holds a huge number of stories. She gave birth in one of the bedrooms. She's made a film there with her artist husband, Matt Collishaw, and the house was used as the set for two Netflix series. You may have heard of baby reindeer and black doves. Polly's in the process of selling the house and starting a new life in the countryside, and I found her in reflective mood. She talks really openly about some of the tougher experiences she's faced in recent years and how they've triggered hyper vigilance and feelings of Anxiety. As part of the healing process, she's decided to let go of some of her possessions and live more simply. The fewer things you have, the fewer things are being asked of you, she says. I think these are really wise words and they sum up the spirit of this podcast in many ways. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy listening.
- [02:51]
C
Hi, Polly.
- [02:52]
A
Hi.
- [02:53]
C
Thanks so much for inviting us in here, and thanks for the tour. You grew up in the Cotswolds, I think, is that right?
- [03:00]
A
Mm, Yeah, I did.
- [03:01]
C
What was home like there?
- [03:04]
A
It was a fairly functioning household. I had two older sisters, my mom and my dad. And my dad variously worked with animals. Like, he was always sort of setting up businesses for different animals. He'd gone to some agricultural college, and when I was born, I think he was working artificially inseminating cattle for some company. And then I think he was made redundant from that. And he then decided to sort of start up his own businesses. And there was all sorts of things that he did at that point, and I thought, I'm probably getting it all wrong. And I could sort of hear him shouting. No, it wasn't that. But there was something to do with angora goats, because we had about 200 Angora goats for a while, but we didn't live on a farm. We lived on a very normal. Just a house in a village. So he would rent the odd field from local farmers for the goats. So they were always kind of nearby, but not quite, you know, on our property. But then if any. Any of them got sick, they would kind of move in with us. So they were often like. There would be baby goats in the dog beds. I remember sometimes coming home to that. We had a really old sick goat that we kind of adopted that was often tethered to a tree outside. Then he moved into. I think during the BSE crisis, he thought there was a. I think there was this kind of belief that maybe ostrich meat was going to take over from beef and beef became a less viable option. So he invested in a pair of ostriches. But they. They didn't live near us. I think they were about to move near, and then one of them died, and then that all went tits up because they didn't breed. He had llamas and they were up the road and a little hamlet called Kitebrook. And I remember. I just remember riding. I just remember being in fields a lot, like various fields, herding goats and generally being sort of like my dad frustratedly yelling at me to, like, stop something from escaping or being Spat at by llamas. We had llamas. You know, it's a weird mishmash of memories. And it was kind of fun and eccentric, I guess, and I had a lot of freedom. We were in a village and we just used to go out and play. Quite old fashioned, I suppose. We'd just go and then we'd come back at suppertime and we'd make dams in the streams. There was a farmer who had a load of bales, hay bales that we used to make these amazing dens in. But he was always threatening us. So then we'd kind of go and find another place to build the dens. Climbing trees, you know, it was quite. Yeah, it was not a bad childhood. It definitely instilled a real love of nature and the countryside, which is ironic because my whole teenage years I just remember spending desperate to get out of there and move to a city.
- [05:44]
C
Always the way, isn't it?
- [05:45]
A
Exactly. That's just being a teenager, I guess.
- [05:47]
C
It's always the way. And then you come full circle and go back again, I find.
- [05:50]
A
But you're on the country. Yeah. Never happy.
- [05:53]
C
But obviously the flip side of having animals around is. Is death, right?
- [05:58]
A
Yeah.
- [05:59]
C
I mean, in the context of your work, you must have got quite used to the idea of handling dead stuff, is that fair to say?
- [06:05]
A
Oh, yeah, very, very used to that, yes. Because I used to breed hamsters as well. I don't know if it was intentional or just. I think it started because we accidentally got a male and we already had a female. And then they started breeding and then, you know, my mom just had so many other preoccupations. She had three jobs and she was always having to help out with the animals as well. And she probably didn't even notice that my bedroom was suddenly overrun with hamsters. And then the cat used to break in and we had two cats, which was not, you know, a great marriage. Hamsters and cats. The cats would always break in and mutilate one or two of them. We'd find them sort of, we'd shut the door and we did our best to protect the hamsters, but somehow the cat would get around it. And I remember at one point there was 19 of them and we didn't have space, so they all went in the bath for a while. Empty bath, obviously, no water in it. But we had to put the plug in the bath and just there was lots of little hamsters running around in the bath. And until my dad was trying to kind of knock up some sort of hutch for them in the garage. So, yeah, they would die. I remember getting quite used to just scooping up a dead hamster off my floor. And then I remember I've really quite a vivid memory of mine. When I must have been about seven or eight, was when a goat died. My dad was. He wasn't a vet. He very definitely wasn't a vet, but he was convinced that he knew what was wrong and how to treat the animals. And one of his best friends was a vet. And they were always sort of having little arguments with each other because the vet would turn up and say, why do you keep taking things into your own hands? And I remember my dad dissecting a goat that had died to try and find out what was wrong with it. So going a little autopsy just in the backyard. And I just remember him cutting the stomach open and all this grass spilling out the stomach and just being fascinated and thinking. So that's where it goes. They're eating the grass, and it's now inside there. And then. So there was a kind of interest in biology and anatomy, but it was. For me, it was always a lot more visceral and physical. And I think the problem that I had at school was science was taught in a very boring kind of way where we didn't do any experiments or anything. I remember being really jealous. A friend of mine went to a school where they cut up a frog and an eyeball and, like, pleading with my teacher to let us do that, and she didn't. So I had no interest really in science because it was all very much like just things written on a blackboard, but it was there. And I used to have to drive the dead goats to an abattoir as well. They were already dead. But they would go to this abattoir because that's where they used to process the meat. And it was made into dog food, I think. But they were often bloated and smelly by the time they were put in the car and we would take them. I just remember all the windows open on my head out because the smell was so bad. So, yeah, after that, it really. People were. I remember I was 23 when I started doing taxidermy, and everyone used to say, how can you. How can you cut it open? And it. That just was never a thing for me. It was really. And also because the animals have to be fresh. So I think the really disgusting thing is bad smells or maggots, that those are the things that we tend to recoil from. And mostly you would never skin or try to work with an animal that was rotten because it wouldn't work, all the feather or the furs would. Fur would fall out. So, yeah, I always used to think, well, why wouldn't you want to skin an animal? Why wouldn't you want to see what was underneath the skin? It's fascinating. The skin is only about 5 or 10. I can't remember the exact percentage. It's under 10%, I think, of our body is our skin. So there is so much more that we don't know about. Unless we've done medical training, none of us are ever going to see that.
- [09:20]
C
Didn't your mum find a scene of carnage with the chickens one day?
- [09:24]
A
Oh, yeah, we had chickens as well. We had so many animals. I think we had. I was telling someone the other day, had chickens and I said, yeah, we used to have 19 chickens. She was like, 19 chickens? Why do you have 19? I was like, I don't know, because we didn't have a very big garden. Yeah. But I think we had 19 chickens. I just remembered that there was 19 headless chickens in the morning because somehow I think the fox had basically broken open the hen coop and they'd all tried to escape and he just. That's what they do, they just decapitate them all. And then they only take one. Yeah, they. They kill. But then they can only obviously carry one back with them. So they just left all the dead bodies? Yeah.
- [09:59]
C
Oh, wow. What was your bedroom like? Did you spend much time in your room? Was that a thing?
- [10:05]
A
Yeah, to spend quite a lot of time in my room. I liked my room. I quite like my own company. I mean, when I was really young, I remember I would just, like, make magazines and I would draw pictures of animals and write little things about, like. I'd go out. My sister Emily and I would always. We'd have this sort of, like, little nature club that we do together where we'd go and dip pond water and draw tadpoles and, you know, quite kind of virtuous sort of nature stuff and, like, collect leaves and so that. I do remember that for a while, and climbing the trees and bringing all of that stuff back and writing poetry. I used to write a lot of poems about the trees and things. And I mean, that's the thing. When you're kind of bored, you do get really creative. And I try not to cave in when my kids say they're bored now, because I remember all of that. I just remember how bored I was a lot of the time. And then I'd sit and I'd Be really bored. And I think, well, no one's going to fix this. So then you'd start to do something. And that's always when the most interesting work used to come, I think. But when I was a teenager it was just like. I think I had a red wall and I had a kind of weird. I had a chair that my dad made me. I remember seeing some sort of catalogue came through the, the door. God knows what it was. But anyway, it had a chair in a really weird looking chair with a very high back and like one really narrow arm, one really fat arm. I mean, I was always quite interested in design and things being a bit kind of different. I never, I do remember I. I never wanted what other people wanted. I always wanted kind of the opposite, if anything, almost maybe on purpose because I thought, well, if everyone is into that, then I'm going to be into this thing instead because that's going to be more interesting or I'll stand out or whatever it might be, I don't know. But I would always kind of be drawn to the things that people weren't so interested in. And it was such a weird, quite ugly chair actually. And it had all these swirly patterns and colors on it and I just really wanted this chair. And I remember my mum and dad saying, well, you don't need a chair and it's 100 quid and we're not buying you a chair. And then my dad very sweetly went off and made me this chair. He just like looked at it and he kind of cobbled it together out of bits of wood and presented it to me. So I remember lying on the kitchen floor, like when I get back from school, I decided to make it black and white, checked, but tiny little squares, only the size of like those little bathroom tiles. And I just remember like painstakingly drawing out the light. It was enormous. The back was like up to here and then just like getting these little. My mum bought me some Humbrol paints and I would just paint black and white, black and white and black and white squares. And I did finish it in the end and I had it, I had it here in the basement. I kept it right up until here because I couldn't bring myself to throw that out. And I did. And actually my friend, when we moved out of here, so much stuff had to go to the tip and my friend filmed me chucking it off into the skip because I was a bit like, oh, this chair, this is one thing I feel weird about chucking, but I chucked it.
- [12:50]
C
How do you feel about that now?
- [12:51]
A
Fine.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Yeah, it's okay. I've got rid of so many things. I think it's fine.
- [12:55]
C
Yeah. So you're the youngest of three, is that right?
- [12:58]
A
Yeah.
- [12:59]
C
So what sort of character were you in, that three? I mean, how would you describe that dynamic?
- [13:05]
A
I think I was always the moderator. So I think, actually it's quite a classic thing with three kids. Like, you know, the first and the second. I don't know if the first and the second always have difficulties. Maybe it's when the third one comes along and they start to have difficulties. I'm not sure. Like, I have two and they're really different. They're like, one's here and the other's, like, on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, which seems to be the case with most people I speak to who have two children. They will say this, but I think actually there's no coincidence. I was thinking maybe it's an evolutionary thing. You know, maybe we have to be very different in order for our parents to look. You know, resources are finite. Right. So you have to like different things and you have to fill different gaps in the market. I think. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the first two are always so different. And that was exactly my eldest. I think they were very different. One looked more like one parent, one looked more like the other parent. I looked like. Like right in between. I look like both sisters. I'm the kind of. I think I link the two of them together in a way. I think I was. My mum said I was just really chilled out. And I think. I think you have to be. When you come in that late, for a start, people aren't really fussing over you the way they are with the older children. You kind of get ignored. There was no photos of me or anything. I thought I was adopted for years because my mum said, I know. But by the time you came along, we were sort of over it. By then, we weren't taking pictures of you. We were so excited when Sophie arrived. And there's these little baby books, pictures of her in. And then Sophie slightly smaller baby book for Emily and then no baby book for me.
- [14:26]
C
So you hear that a lot there, don't you? There's a sort of flick book of the first one entire life.
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A
I get it. I'm the same, though. You do? Yeah.
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C
I think it's really interesting you say that about the dynamics. It made me think of. There's a sort of slightly niche branch of psychology called family constellation therapy.
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A
Okay.
- [14:43]
C
And the idea is that a family or a group of people is a constellation and, you know, everyone sort of fits together in a slightly dysfunctional way, but it kind of works. In my case, I've got three daughters and we had one and then we had identical twins second time around.
- [15:00]
A
Well, that's a whole new dynamic.
- [15:01]
C
Yeah, exactly. It's quite a complicated system, but it's. It's sort of, you know, they kind of make it work between them.
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A
And do the twins gang up on the other one a bit? No.
- [15:10]
C
What happens is our eldest pairs off with one of the twins.
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A
That's just what happened with us though, actually.
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C
Is it? Yeah, yeah.
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A
Well, did the twins. The constant pairing and leaving one. Yeah, but the pairs change. Yeah, but there's always one slightly. Yeah, we definitely had that. I would think I was used as a sort of pawn to play off each other quite a lot with my.
- [15:28]
C
Because you were the most biddable and easy going, right? Yeah, yeah, I think we have that. So I get the impression you had quite a lot of energy, though. Is that. Is that fair?
- [15:38]
A
Yeah, I think I was. I was creative. I definitely had quite a creative way of looking. And I just don't think I did the obvious thing or like. Well, came up with necessarily the obvious solution. And like I say, I think a lot of it came down to just being quite bored. I do think if I'd grown up now. I worry about this a lot with the whole screen thing and everything. When you've just got something, constantly, if you're bored, you just do that, pick up your phone and look at it. And I can feel. I mean, I can really feel it sapping my creativity now when I do that. And I know that if I go and put my phone in another room and shut the door and just sit for 15 minutes, which feels like quite a long time when you're so addicted to a phone. I will start to have full thoughts, you know, that have some sort of, like, trajectory that goes somewhere. And I'm not constantly interrupting myself with things and you don't know it at the time, but it was a real privilege, I guess, to be growing up in the countryside and without those distractions. And I wasn't really Molly coddled because my mum was too busy to, you know, she was always working. And so I just kind of. I had a lot of independence and freedom and my mum was very good at. Not all she really cared about was, you know, if we were happy. She just had no real kind of ambitions for us, in a funny way. Which sometimes I thought was a bit odd, but then I also think it was good. It gave us an awful lot of kind of freedom to explore and not worry about failing and messing stuff up.
- [17:02]
B
If you're enjoying this episode and are curious to see inside Polly Morgan's home, we're sharing an experience exclusive house tour over on Patreon. Polly shows us her art collection, including gifts from artists like Damien Hirst and Dinos Chapman, and some of her own taxidermy pieces. And she takes us down into her studio in the cellar, where she spent many afternoons peeling the skins off snakes. Head to patreon.com homingwithmat to take a.
- [17:33]
C
You left the Cotswolds to go to London, didn't you? To study?
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A
Yeah.
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C
What did you study?
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A
I studied English. I didn't study art. And that was purely because I remember being a bit sort of like, it was a bit of a toss up between doing drama or art for my A level. And I went for drama because for a while in my teens, I used to go to a theater group and I liked acting, but I stopped. I just didn't enjoy it anymore when I came to do it for A level. And I always regretted not doing art, but I think by that point it would have been hard to go to art college. And I was good at English, I was good at writing and interpreting texts and stuff. And I just wanted to come to London. I had a boyfriend in London. I just thought everything. I was so sort of, I think, because I was the youngest of three as well, so I'd seen both my sisters go off to universities and, you know, have that freedom that you get when you leave home. And I felt so ready for it. I'd had a boyfriend in London since I was 16, so I'd already been coming up every weekend. And I remember just applying to London colleges. And I came and I went to Queen Mary College, which was in Mile End. And a lot of people warned me of this, but I didn't listen because I just wanted to come to London. But they said, look, there's not much of a campus thing in London. You might not find it's a student as fun, but I just thought, well, I want to go to London anyway, so why waste three years in a different city? And then I'd have to come to London. And they were right. There was absolutely no campus at all. There was nothing like that. And I didn't really make any friends, actually. I made one or two very superficial friends, but not people that I kept up with because back in those days you had, like a grant, so there was some money towards, like, living accommodation. But, you know, I think it only just covered that. And I didn't have, like, financial support from my parents, so I got a job. And that was a job that I got in the electricity showrooms, this bar in Hoxton Square. It was all just kind of quite random, really, when I look back on it. But then I wonder, was it random? Was I in that area because I was kind of creatively minded? And a lot of those people that ended up in that area, you know, never quite know how much is coincidence or whether you've kind of subtly been steering yourself all along, but actually working in that bar and getting that job and then because I had to have five shifts or something in order to make enough money to survive, I took on that many shifts and I kind of practically lived there. So I'd eat there, I'd drink there. When I wasn't on my shifts, I'd stay there anyway because the drinks would be free or half price anyway. All my friends, I made friends with everyone working there. And it just felt. It was lovely. It felt like I was there for about six years and well beyond when I graduated. And it felt like home. And so university wasn't really a. I didn't even go to pick up my certificate or go to the graduation or anything. I did graduate, but it sort of meant nothing to me. It was really a vehicle to get me to London and I feel like the Shoreditch electricity showrooms was my university.
- [20:27]
C
So didn't your parents get divorced while you were a student, is that right?
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A
Yes, they did, yeah. So when I. My mum sort of left at the same time as me. I was the youngest of three and she moved out pretty much at the same time. And then they divorced shortly afterwards. Yeah.
- [20:41]
C
So did you get the sense that they were waiting for you to go before?
- [20:45]
A
Yes, that was definitely the case. My mum had. You know, they hadn't had a happy marriage. They hadn't been happy. I'd never remember it being a happy marriage. And my mum had decided to just sort of stick it out until we all left home, I think was the. Was her thinking. And so she did that. And then the family house then went up for sale. And so I remember when I was 19, actually driving, I'd often finish a shift at the bar at like 12 or 1 or something. I remember driving back to Little Compton, this village. I grew up in the middle of the night for some reason. I don't know why I did it in the middle of the night, but I did to help my dad sort the house out and break the house down. So I didn't have a family home from the age of 19 either. My mum was living in a very small rental at that point and my dad then went and lived with a friend of his mum's for a bit and he was sort of between homes, so. So yeah, that kind of. That bar brought me up, really. Those people there were very significant in my life. I just think I wasn't really ready. I was. So I just wanted to be in the city and I was excited to. To be with the people I wanted to be with, doing the things I wanted to do. And also, just to sum it, yeah, one of my best friends died just before I left for London and so that had happened and then my parents split up and I just wanted to leave it all behind and just go and have fun, I think. And going to university, it was very much like a. You had to read four books a week and I can't read four books a week. I mean, I love reading, but it completely put me off reading. They were thick books as well and they weren't, you know, they were kind of dense book books that you then had to go and sit through one hour, lecture on and write an essay and then the next week you're onto another book. And I didn't like that way of learning at all. It really put me off reading for a while because I was. I suppose at school you're more used to studying a text in a bit more depth than that. And I felt like we were kind of just skimming the surface of things. I mean, these days, if we had chatgpt, I could just read a synopsis of the book and then I could go in with that. But I'd sort of like be skimming these books or trying to read a chapter and just hiding at the back of the lectures really, because I didn't have enough to say on the subject and it was a wasted opportunity, really. It's a shame because I noticed that all of the older students, all of the mature students, they were really engaged, asking questions. And I would be the same if I went back to university now, because you're much more ready to take that kind of thing in, but I was just not mature enough for it, I don't think.
- [22:54]
C
But on the subject of there not being a campus, didn't you live in a slightly random place with a bunch of punks?
- [23:00]
A
Oh, that was just after. Was that maybe just after I Graduated, I think. No. I first moved into halls of residence in South Woodford and I remember my mum dropping me off there. But we were driving, we were trying to find it, we got really lost and I was in a really bad mood about the whole thing for some reason. I just. I guess I was just a bit sort of nervous about it all and about meeting people. And I remember really angrily because she was saying, oh God, it's around here somewhere. And I pointed to like the ugliest building I could see, which was like this big kind of concrete high rise overlooking the A12. And I went, yes, probably in there. And she went, oh, don't be silly, darling, you know, we'll find it. And we drove around for ages and sure enough, it was in that bloody building. And I was like near the top of the building and it was pretty grim. I mean, it was. We'd have one really dirty bathroom to share between about 10 people on one floor. They weren't like they are now. I've seen the halls of residence, I have now. They look amazing. There was just like. There was one building on that little kind of. I think there was three of these towers and we were all in one. We had one bedroom. It was really just like a cell. It had a sink and that was it. And a bed, single bed. And even my mum was a bit sort of like, you know, she took a lot to sort of. She was very tough, my mum, but she kind of walked in and put the bag. She was trying really hard to find something nice to say about it, I can tell, but she couldn't, so I hated that. And then there was one bar downstairs where people would go, but everyone was just going down and getting completely drunk and snogging each other. And I already had a boyfriend and I felt a little bit more grown up, I think. And then I ended up moving into halls in town, which was a little bit better. But then I lived with friends and yeah, I ended up with a group of punks. But that was, I think three years on and they were like ex art school students too. And they were in a little. It was a little house in Baston Road in Stoke Newington and God, I feel safe. We lived neck. We would live. We were between two families with young kids and now, like having been that person with the young kids, I feel so bad. They were always knocking on our door and asking us to turn music down or. I mean, it wasn't really me, I don't think it was these other guys. They were lovely. They were all Lovely young men. I guess they were. They were like in their late 20s. It was. I answered an ad in the loot. It used to be a paper called the Lute. I don't even know if it exists anymore, but that's where people would look for. For flats. And it just advertised a room. And I turned out they were sort of interviewing people for this room and they offered it to me. And the room was tiny, tiny, tiny. You could barely fit a single bed in it. And they lived in such squalor. My mum used to turn up to visit me with a bottle of bleach because she just said she couldn't go to the loo because it was disgusting. It was like black in that loo. I guess it's just a rite of passage, isn't it? All of that stuff, learning how to look after yourself. And I remember that no one ever washed up. And I would have washed up. But the problem is, once you've got five layers of dirty plates, you just think, well, no, screw you, you do your own. I'm not going to do everyone else's, you're not going to do mine. So then they came up with this system where if people didn't wash up their own plates, you'd put them in their bed and then put the duvet on top of them. That was their solution. And there was this poor guy, he was the landlord's son and he used to come round practically in tears. His mom was a landlord and she lived in Jamaica, but. And she was Jamaican, but she had lived in London and she'd come back every now and then and he was terrified of her, the son. And he'd come round to just sort of check the house before she came to do a little visit of it. And he'd just have his head in his hands, just like crying in the kitchen, saying, guys, you've got to do something about this place. It was funny, but I enjoyed it. It was a nice place. We had a lot of fun there.
- [26:34]
C
So you talked about the bar and Shielder and that sort of brought you up in some ways. But was that also the link to getting into the art world as well? How did the taxidermy thing come about?
- [26:43]
A
I think it just sort of gave me the idea, because I was. That I could do it. I suppose I didn't know any artists really, growing up, or very few. It wasn't really part of my world. My mum was always interested in art and if she had, you know, she'd have the time. She would have taken us to Galleries and things, but she didn't. We didn't tend to have that much time. We didn't go on many holidays. But she used to, if we were in a local, you know, in the city, she would try and find an art gallery to take us to. But it wasn't a big part of our life. And so I just don't think it had really occurred to me that it was something that I could ever do professionally. And then suddenly being somewhere where almost everyone around you is doing it professionally, either photographers or painters or running galleries or something, it's just, yeah, you start to realize that anything is possible. And I did do a little photography course at some point, like a short course, and I took a few photos and I was sort of exploring lots of different mediums, but everywhere I looked, there was people already doing those things very well. There was like, Nick Waplington and Jurgen Teller and all of these people kind of hanging out at the bar. And you just sort of think, well, you don't want to. What more can I add to that at the moment, when all these people are doing these great things? And then there's painters. There was very successful painters. There was. I don't. Everywhere, all the corners seemed to have been like. All of the markets seemed to have been cornered in all the various disciplines. And it wasn't like I cynically sat down and thought, now what can I do that no one else has done? But I think it definitely appealed to me that I was looking for some taxidermy for my. Basically what happened is I was promoted to bar manager and then the original owners had to sell and everyone was leaving. But the new owners really wanted to keep me on because they saw me as a link between. Between the old place and the new place. And they were just very corporate. They owned some places in Knightsbridge. They came and completely trashed the place and ruined it. It was awful. You know, they took out, like, they had great chefs there, all gone. They just started putting in, like, fried spring rolls. And it was awful what they did, but I didn't know that that was coming. And they offered me the flat above the bar, the whole flat for free, as, like a little perk if I stayed on. And I was living in this tiny. This is what I was living with the punks, I think, in a tiny little room. And suddenly I'd never had any space like that before. So I moved in and I had nothing in this flat. It was huge. It was two floors, big, open plan, really great flat. Still like a great flat, even now, if I think back to it by my new standards, it was a great flat and I had nothing, I just had no stuff to put in it. I remember it was empty and looking around thinking, like, oh, I need to decorate it somehow. But I didn't really have money, I just. I had a very small salary in a big flat and I remember saying to somebody that I wanted to have some taxidermy in there. I said, I kind of want the birds to look dead on the windowsill, you know, like they've just kind of died there. Because I just think, I don't know why this is what I wanted. In fact, I do think I know why. And I don't think, I think everyone used to mistake that for me being a bit goth or like a bit macabre. And actually it wasn't that. I think it's just that taxidermy is a lot more convincing when the animal looks dead because you're not expecting it to move. Whereas if you see a taxidermy bird mid flight, it's clearly not flying. If you see it perched on a little branch, you know that it's not really. Well, maybe for a second you're tricked, but not for long. And I think the idea of just having this. I used to want to keep dead birds when I found them as a child and my mum would explain gently that I'd have to bury them and they were going to rot and this was a way of keeping them and having these beautiful creatures just around, it was like a little connection to nature, I suppose. But I don't think I really understood that at the time and everyone just thought it was a bit odd. But anyway, my friend said, well, you know, you should just commission a taxidermist to do that for you. And I said, well, I can't. I don't think I could afford that, could I? And I started looking into it and I couldn't afford it. But I found this taxidermy teacher. Well, he was a taxidermist in Scotland and he offered lessons, but he didn't used to do many lessons. And I just phoned him up one day and I asked him and it was really simple, he just said, yeah, of course. And he lived just outside Edinburgh on this estuary in an old tower. It was all very magical looking. And my friend was at university in Edinburgh, so I used to go and crash on her floor and just. I had a one day lesson with him where I did a very, very rushed pigeon. He wouldn't let me make it look dead because he said that you have to learn how to make them look alive and then you can kind of deconstruct afterwards, which was good advice. I was a bit disappointed to come back with a live looking pigeon, but it was lovely. Mostly because he did it. He did almost all of it, but I felt like I knew the basics. And then I would practice on my kitchen table in my lovely flat and I would send him pictures of things I would do and we'd just talk on the phone. He kind of explained to me where it might have gone wrong. And then I used to go back and visit him and I don't know, I think it was just everyone was really interested in what I was doing. Suddenly it was really nice. I was really interested in it. It was a perfect marriage of art and science and the science that really engaged me because I could see and it was so tactile and you can feel the bones and you can understand the way they connect together. And I couldn't even now name all the different parts of a skeleton, but I know where they are and I know the lengths and how they fit together. And you know, if I'm stroking an animal, I know exactly what it looks like underneath the skin at that point. And that was all really interesting to me and everyone responded really positively to it. All of the people that I was hanging out with and people said, I want to see what you're doing, you know. And co manager of my bar went to set up a bar called Bistrotech and he said, come and do some work in Bistrotech. We've got these domes, come and put some works in there, we'll have a little party for you. And. And it was lovely. It was just a. Sort of felt like the right thing at the right time and yeah, it was a catalyst.
- [32:13]
C
I love this idea that you're, you know, by day you're kind of deconstructing pigeons upstairs and then by night you're coming down to the bar and running it. As a manager it's such an interesting. It's such an interesting sort of.
- [32:25]
A
My customers would come, bring me dead birds and things, you know, it became wide. Yeah, because you have to. I didn't want to kill anything. I don't think it's even legal to kill stuff for taxidermy. But I'd have to put the word out that I was looking for things and it was quite hard to find things in the beginning. So yeah, I'd start sort of get these little offerings from people or phone calls at 10:00 clock at night saying they Just found a mouse somewhere.
- [32:49]
C
So you are not a trained artist, yet you found yourself in the art world. Did you feel like outsider? I mean, do you even accept that now? How do you feel like you fit into the art world?
- [33:03]
A
I don't think I do, really. I do think I'm an outsider. And the thing is, I didn't really care to start with at all because I came at it so kind of obliquely. I hadn't been a plan of mine, and I realized how kind of, like, privileged this sounds, I guess. But I wasn't right at the beginning. I wasn't trying to be an artist. I wasn't impressed, particularly by these artists that came to the bar because I didn't know who half of them were, so they were just customers. And then some of them became my friends. Some of them I thought were horrible. But it was only later that I then started in a way. Like, the more I learned, the harder it became to be an artist in a way, because the more kind of humbling it was. And I suddenly. I do remember being at the beginning just coasting and thinking, this is great. Yeah, I'll just make something and they like it and they'll show it. And then suddenly someone would buy it. And it all fe felt very kind of, quite easy. And I did feel a bit bad about that because I also had friends I'd made who were really struggling to be artists, and they weren't getting exhibitions and they weren't selling things, and I must have been really annoying to them. But then I remember being in an exhibition, I think it might have been the Pallant House in Chichester. It was like a proper sort of museum. And suddenly realizing, you know, there was some really serious artists there that I was showing amongst. And I just suddenly thought, oh, my God, this is. Is so embarrassing. I'm not good enough for any of this. And, like, I started to learn more about these people and about art generally. And I felt really silly. And I felt like I was just a bit of a pretender. Like I somehow kind of. What's that word you give people who don't think they're good enough?
- [34:37]
C
Imposter syndrome.
- [34:38]
A
Yeah, I don't think it was imposter syndrome, because I think I was an imposter. And I think I had coasted very for a while. Like, I think I'd got away with quite a lot in the beginning, got away with showing work that wasn't really probably good enough. And it was all stuff that if I'd been at university, I would have Gone into a crit and everyone would have demolished it and I would have gone with my tail between my legs and made something a bit better next time. But no one did that. Everyone just kept saying, yeah, great, well, you know, buy it, we'll show it. So then I had to kind of do it to myself and then. And then also, like, the market would do it to me. Suddenly, like, people would just stop buying, you know, the things changed a lot as I got older. I had this big run in my 20s where I just. People wanted to buy my work. People really wanted to know what I was making and they wanted to show it and they bought it. And I made enough money because I didn't have any input from my parents financially. And I suddenly found myself in a position where I could put a deposit down on a house, which was just extraordinary. And yet at the time I sort of thought, well, that's great, I'll buy a house. I really always wanted that sort of security for myself. And I remember having this. No one would give me a mortgage because I'm an artist and, you know, there's too big a fluctuation in your. In your income. And I remember the only people who would give me a mortgage were Coutts bank because they kind of. They give mortgages to artists and sports people and people with kind of like more interesting, less predictable careers. And I remember I had to have a meeting with the bank manager at Coutts bank and it was in a little private room and we had like a three course meal and. And I remember him saying to me, you know, do you think these earnings that you've made over the last few years, projecting forward, do you think you'll continue to earn like that? And I said, like, definitely, absolutely, yes, of course I will, yeah. And I won't have any problem meeting the payments. And I kind of believed it, I think. And I remember saying to my mum, you know, I was buying this house that was like really expensive and for her it was really expensive and that I had a 500 grand mortgage. And I remember her being quite kind of saying, are you sure about this? Done. I was like, yes, fine, it's gonna be all right. And of course it wasn't easy and it wasn't fine and everything. I was kind of like at the peak at that moment. And of course people stopped buying their work and I couldn't afford to continue living there. But at the same time I could afford to hang onto it by moving out and renting it out and so on. And I think it was definitely the best decision I ever made. But I do look back on that person sometimes and think, God, you just had no idea.
- [36:58]
C
Well, it's kind of the ignorance of you.
- [37:00]
A
It is, it's amazing. But it's such a superpower in a way because you just. You just charge through all these incredible opportunities thinking, fine, yeah, I can. I'll deal with all of that when it happens. Yeah, and you do deal with it when it happens. But if I. I don't think the person I am now would ever have done that, have like speculated on that house and that kind of a mortgage.
- [37:20]
C
Yeah, it was a good thing to do.
- [37:22]
A
It was, it was. It was a great thing to do. It's the best thing I ever did.
- [37:26]
C
So let's talk about this place. So we're in Camberwell.
- [37:30]
A
Yeah.
- [37:31]
C
You can probably hear the. The buses roaring away in the background. So this was a pub. What was it like when you got here? Was it actually a pub when you bought it?
- [37:41]
A
No, it had been run for, I think, seven or eight years as a location for shoots for like, stills films, tv, that kind of thing.
- [37:51]
C
So no one was actually living here?
- [37:52]
A
I don't think anyone was living here. I think. I think people had sort of crashed here. It didn't look particularly lived in. No, it was pretty run down. But it had been a pub before that. So I think they'd bought it as a pub. And I think because actually my husband used to. He went to Goldsmiths years ago and he drank here when he was at Goldsmiths. So it had been a sort of popular, quite long running south London pub.
- [38:15]
C
Yeah. So your husband, Matt Collishaw, is an artist as well. How long have you been together and how did you get together?
- [38:22]
A
We've been together 17 years, I think now.
- [38:27]
C
Okay.
- [38:28]
A
And we'd known each other for a long time. I remember I first met him when I was 19 and working at the electricity showrooms. I knew his brother better. Both his brothers used to drink there a lot and he used to drink there too. He used to go out with Tracey Emin at that time and they would often. I just remember they would always turn up at closing time and we would always be. There'd be this collective eye roll as they turn. They'd all turn up just as we. They were friends with the owner and everyone would be like, shall I get home? Yes. And no one really argued with Tracy, so she would sort of come in drunk and say she wanted wine. And you'd look at the owner thinking. And he'd Go give her wine. So we'd then have to sort of stay on and entertain them. So I just remember thinking he was a bit of a pain and he was. I only ever saw him when he was drunk at like 2am really. And his brothers were probably even worse. They were always. They'd turn up more regularly than him also at closing time but one of his brothers, Andy was very fun and he was very good friends with the owner and he was a bit of a kind of like East London fixture. So I knew Matt but not terribly well. Just to sort of say hi to it might have been when I left the bar I got to know him a bit better and I was working as an artist so I did actually, I mean our work, there's quite a lot of sort of like common ground and themes and things and I think I was in. I was in a show with him at the haunch of Venison and we just had a lot of the same group of friends. We ended up hanging out together a lot and then he'd. He was in a very brief marriage and I just split up from. I was briefly engaged to someone and then we got together after that but not till I was 27 or 8 I think. So, you know, I'd known him for a good nine years or something so.
- [40:03]
C
Did you buy this place together?
- [40:05]
A
Well, not technically, no. I bought the place in Hackney that I just mentioned and he bought this place. So at the same time we found ourselves. So Matt, he's a well known artist and he's part of a group of well known artists but of all of them he didn't financially do as well as a lot, you know. His better known contemporaries like Damien and Tracy and Sarah Lucas all went onto these kind of great riches and Matt had a son when he was 23 from a very sort of brief relationship and he ended up spending a lot of time looking after a baby I think while they were kind of out doing their work and you know, being out and about I guess. And so I don't know if it was that. He says it's might be something to do with that, but I don't know. I also think his work, his work is quite sort of a bit more. It's quite cerebral mad I think it takes a while to sort of get. He reads a hell of a lot of books, he really like does these deep dives into subjects and I think he's the kind of artist that he's just kind of got better with age. The more work he makes, the More sense you can make of all of the work that came before. And I think, you know, maybe some people originally thought his first works were just intentionally shocking, which is definitely something that he would never have wanted to do. So his was a kind of more of a slow build, his career, and he'd never bought anywhere before. And suddenly we both found ourselves in positions financially to buy somewhere, but we weren't, you know, I was always very determined. He had just come out of a short marriage he wasn't interested in marrying or anything. I never thought I wanted to get married and I made that very clear. And I'd. I think because of the way my parents had lived and the way that my mum had sort of stayed in an unhappy marriage for financial reasons, really, if she'd been independently wealthy, she would have probably. They would have split up a lot earlier and she would have bought a house. But I think that those things do. They can change the course of your life. You know, how much money you have, whether you have your own property. And I was very determined to buy my own house. I always. That was like my one goal was to just to sort of have that. And then once I had that, I would feel kind of safe. So we did that. We bought houses separately and Matt found this and he couldn't quite afford it, so he went in with a friend of his. But we found it together in the. Actually, the girlfriend of his son found it on this website called Amazing Space, I think it was called, and she forwarded the link and we all thought it looked great. So we all met here. I think she was there. She was here. Lauren and Alex, Matt's son, who by this stage would have been 18, 19, something like that. And Matt and I, and we all met here and we all just thought it was amazing because we'd never seen anywhere this big. You know, none of. We'd all been renting much smaller places and Matt had always had a separate studio. And so it kind of felt like a joint purchase in many ways. But he lived here alone or with his friend. And I used to just come and stay at the weekends and live in my place for the first sort of eight years or something. And then it was only when I got pregnant with. With our first son that I moved in.
- [42:56]
C
So you were here how many years?
- [42:59]
A
So we moved out when Clifford was eight. So I would have back eight years, just a bit over eight and a half years, I think I was here.
- [43:06]
C
Okay. So, I mean, I've never done a podcast like this before and it's Actually really fascinating. But you're in the process of moving out.
- [43:14]
A
Yeah.
- [43:15]
C
And so, you know, you'll see from the film footage, like, there's some stuff, but there's not all of your stuff, clearly. What's that like for you? And how would you describe the experience of being here as a family for that period of time? What does this place kind of mean to you?
- [43:32]
A
I mean, it's funny, it means a lot on the one hand, and it's sort of profoundly important. And yet on the other hand, I can quite easily let it go. I'm not quite sure why or how that is. I suppose just because in life, life is a series of letting things go. It's a series of little losses, really. And also, you spend. I think you spend a lot of your time, your life, accumulating things and people. And then slowly you start to. Certainly, in my case, anyway, I've been really sort of decluttering, trying to get down to the very bare essentials. I remember Matt was describing it about people, actually. He said. He said he was talking about coming back into London and running into someone in the street that he hadn't seen for ages and that he didn't particularly want to run into. And he said, it's funny, you spend the first half of your life trying to meet people and then the second half of your life running away from them. And I thought, but that's kind of true also, almost, with stuff. I think I wanted to. To sort of accumulate these things for some reason, because I felt like they said something, they meant something to me, or they said something about me. And then you sort of realize that actually they don't. And none of those things are very important. And all that's important is the people in your life. So I'm taking my children with me. If I was leaving them here, it would be very different. And it has served us really, really beautifully in the years that we were here. It's. I feel like we really, really rinsed it. Like, we really used this building. And that's what was really lovely about it. Like every. Every room, something. Lots of amazing things have happened in every room of the house.
- [45:16]
C
Tell us a couple of those memories.
- [45:19]
A
Well, I gave birth to my second son in one of the bedrooms, the only bedroom that's never actually been occupied by me.
- [45:27]
C
That was accidental, wasn't it?
- [45:28]
A
That was an accident, really. Yes. Because I think I'd never. I had never been one of these women who just planned on this lovely home birth. I felt very realistic about it. Like I'm going to be in pain. I'm going to need medication. So for the first child that was just. It was such a long labor anyway. It was over 30 hours. I got to hospital and they gave me the medication and, you know, it happened. And the second one, in hindsight, I realized that the midwives were trying to sort of trick me into a home birth. They just kept trying to steer me in that direction and I kept sort of keeping open. They say, what's your plan? Wasn't. But I never understood the whole birth plan thing because I thought, how can you plan for a birth? You know, I don't know how long it's going to take or where I'm going to be when I go into labor. So I'd sort of say, well, you know, we'll see. You know, maybe I'm live nice and near the hospital. So. And then I called them when my contraction started and they just sort of said, oh, we'll get in the bath and we'll be with you really soon. And they just didn't come for ages. And I think they were about an hour and a half. And by that stage they'd said, well, it's too late to go anywhere. So I ended up having him at home, which was lovely. Lovely in hindsight. I mean, hell, at the time, because you haven't got all the drugs that you had the first time around. But it was lovely to have him here, and it was lovely to know that he was born here and to wake up with him in my own bed. So I'm grateful to them for doing that. What else has happened here? I have my 40th birthday here, which was a really lovely big dinner downstairs and partying. I don't mean everything's happened here. That's the thing. We've had so many. Everyone in our lives has been through this building. And even those who are not in our lives sometimes who come for, I don't know, a shoot. We rent out for shoots sometimes. Every time they come, they say to us that they've been here before in the past because this building used to be used for a shoot. And every time I meet anyone out and about in London, if I say I'm from Camberwell and they say, oh, where? And I say, oh, it's pub on Camberwell, New York. They all know, they say, oh, I always wonder what goes on in that building. We've made films here.
- [47:19]
C
Like what?
- [47:21]
A
Well, Matt made a film for this project that he was doing with this orchestra where we had to sort of Turn the ground floor into effectively, like an old people's. It was a series of scenes of people passing. Old people passing away in bed. And so we had to dress the room differently, like seven times. So we had this kind of. This one sort of stock room that we built and we would change that over. And I had to make a. For that film, he also had. He recreated this thing called a sky burial, which is what they do in Tibet, where they put. The ground's too hard to bury people, so they carry up the bodies or they dismember the bodies, even sometimes to the top of the mountain and the vultures carry them off.
- [48:01]
C
Wow.
- [48:01]
A
And he needed a skeleton and he said, oh, you'll be good at that kind of thing. Can you do that? So we bought a plastic skeleton and then with my friend Robert, we had that splayed out on a table. And we were basically just making like red paper pulp, sort of like just making it look like bits of flesh and tissue on this skeleton. With my little son watching the whole thing. I remember he said he thought it looked like a flamingo. That's what I remember. Very sweet. And we've rented out for shoots as well. We had baby reindeer, some of that was filmed here. And black doves that were on Netflix, they were filmed here. And countless other things. Things.
- [48:39]
C
It's such a good building. That's the thing. And that space downstairs particularly is so big and adaptable. So down in the cellar, is your studio in inverted commas or was your studio. I find that really interesting. Obviously, as an artist, you have to use space where you can find it. Right. And you had the space and you did it. But, you know, low ceiling strip lighting, no natural light. What was that like for you, working in that space?
- [49:07]
A
It wasn't very efficient, you know, it was a bit grim. But I always put a positive spin on it. I'm quite a positive person on the whole. I'm very optimistic and I tend to try and just see the best in everything. And it was either that or not work at all. I guess when I had a baby or young children, and I felt really happy that I had. I was. I'd come from a much nicer studio in Hackney, but I genuinely felt very happy to have that space here and to sort of do something with it. The problem was there was just too much stuff in there, I think, because I put the studio into a basement that was already used, a bit of storage. So I was kind of slotting in around space that was already filled. So there was just Never enough kind of order and it was never kind of clean enough. I could never find things. And I think really it was just an inefficient way of working because I guess I just didn't really love being down there. I always wanted to come back up. I wanted to come back up into the light and come back to my family. So I'd go down and I would just do what I had to do down there and then come back up again. And if it had been a more pleasing space, I would have probably spent more time organizing and tidying. And I'm happy to have a new studio where I moved into an empty building and I managed to kind of build it from the ground up. So now I know where everything is and it's just a lot more efficient. I get things done quicker.
- [50:29]
C
So to give us a picture of that time, you would have been breastfeeding, raising children and then what, Putting them down to sleep and then going down to the cellar and working. Is that right?
- [50:39]
A
Yeah, exactly that.
- [50:40]
C
Yeah, that's full on.
- [50:42]
A
So, yeah, there was. There'd be a few hours or 20. I'd have a baby monitor down there with me and I would run down. And it's tricky because I've realized that so much as an artist, I think you really, unless you're in the middle of something, you know exactly what you're doing and you're doing this the kind of like the grunt work where you're like repeating a task over and over again, which is quite rare. It's really hard to get anything done in these like half an hour, hour bursts. Because I'd go down there and it would take me just to like, get my brain back in order and remember what I was doing and what I. What I had been doing the last time I was down there finding all of the right stuff. And then you'd hear this little like, eh on the monitor and I was like, go back upstairs again. So I don't think I did anything particularly great during that time, but it was still just having it there. It's really. It's good. It's a nice. It's a hard time for like, women when that early stage when the babies are really young and you're like a machine and you're either just feeding or sleeping or changing and nappies and just to have that little space to go go down and sit and think sometimes, and sometimes just to play with the materials. I think that was kind of enough for me for a while.
- [51:48]
C
Yeah. In terms of your work, it strikes Me that this kind of. There's this theme of sort of deception, right, in that you're using things like fingernail lacquers and, you know, snake skins and manipulating those. Just tell us about that.
- [52:05]
A
Well, I think it's kind of all of a continuum with taxidermy, because I don't do a lot of taxidermy now at all. And what I do do is I work with. I make a lot of sculptures with snake scales or parts of snake bodies in, but they're cast from the body. And I don't use the skin anymore because the skin never. It's very rare for the skin to dry in such a way that it's. That it really looks exactly like a snake, I think, because the thing is, with taxidermy, you're. You're very dependent on the feathers and the fur to kind of hide the skin as it dries. It dries like a shrink wrap, and it's. So. It becomes kind of crispy dry. It looks dry, looks parched. But the feathers and the fur cover that, so you don't see it. But with a snake, obviously, it doesn't have that. And the whole thing about snakes is they've got this lovely kind of, like, incredibly smooth, shiny surface. And you don't really. You know, you can sand them and you can put paint on them, and you can varnish them, and you can try your best to sort of recreate it. But I realized that no matter how good I got at recreating it, it was never better than actually just casting the body and painting directly onto the cast, which is what I now do. And I also started using the packaging in my work and sort of casting, like, polystyrene packaging that the objects come in these kind of. They're like these kind of very modern kind of fossils, in a way, because you just see this cavity, and you can't necessarily work out what was in it. But I didn't really see the link for a while between that and the taxidermy. But there's a. It is a very obvious link because they're all sort of like a 3D trompe l', oeil, really. Like the very fact that I wanted the birds to look dead in the beginning, it was because it was that kind of trickery. It was trying to hang on to something that you don't hang on to. And even. Even, like, the objects that I cast and paint up, I sometimes use blocks of wood and things like that, and sometimes I'll cast and paint them up, and they just look like Wood, but they're not. And they would just be like a little lump of wood that I had lying on the floor. An off cut from something that I was using in the studio. And I like that idea of kind of commemorating that somehow and making that last, you know, that tiny little incidental bit of wood or that little bird that was going to rot and those polystyrene ends that, you know, people just chuck into landfill. That actually say a lot about us, not just personally, but as a kind of society, what we're buying, what we prize, particularly during COVID everyone was buying stuff and everything was all being delivered to the houses. And I was just. I imagined like in years to come, the landfill of these things and what those cavities would sort of clues that like future archaeologists could get from our society from analyzing those cavities.
- [54:42]
C
And do you, in terms of your work, do you like living with it? Do you like having it around?
- [54:48]
A
I do know. And that's really. And that's a really nice and quite new feeling. And I had a really long period of kind of like kind of artist block, I suppose you'd call it, during my 30s, I think it was, when I was sort of transitioning from a bit more traditional taxidermy to what I'm doing now. I couldn't quite. I was sort of feeling my way and I just didn't. I thought it was normal to not like your work. I remember being in an exhibition I'd done in 2012 and. And it was a really well attended opening and everyone was asking me questions about the work and things were selling and I remember just feeling really hollow and awful and like a fraud and like I didn't like anything in the room and I just felt deeply embarrassed. And I. It was a horrible feeling. And I remember thinking, I don't ever want to do that again. But then I couldn't quite work out why. Why did I feel like that? And I kept saying to other artists, you know, do you feel like this? And they would be like, not really. And I don't feel like that at all anymore. I think I was just a bit lost. I didn't quite know what I was saying or where I was going with any of it. And I'd fallen into this trap where I'd had a bit of early success. So the more kind of commercially driven galleries wanted me to do something. They didn't really care what I did. They just thought, just do something and we'll show it and hopefully we'll sell it. And when you're Self employed. And when you've got a big mortgage to pay, you just say yes. And you think these opportunities might dry up if you. If you don't say yes to them. And so I was on a bit of a treadmill of just making stuff and I just go into the studio and I sort of think, like, what would Polly Morgan make? Because I didn't really feel like that person anymore. And I would just make something but not really love it. And now I've come. I really very consciously pulled back from all of that. And it was quite helpful having the kids because I had another occupation and something that I could focus on during that time and actually having them. I don't know whether it was them that kind of like did something. It was like the dam unblocked at that point and I suddenly knew what I was doing and what I wanted to say. And since then I am. Yeah. If I'm not proud of my work, if I don't want to live with my work, I don't want to hang it on the work, then now I know that that's a sign that it hasn't worked and I wouldn't exhibit it either.
- [56:49]
C
Yeah. And certainly here it looks like you've been living with a lot of other artists work as well. So you've got a couple behind you, a couple of quite big Damien Hirst pharmacy cabinets.
- [57:01]
A
It's actually one, but it's in two parts and we didn't quite have the height to do one over the other. So it's slightly deconstructed either side of the chimney breast. Yeah.
- [57:09]
C
And then you've got a Dinos Chapman piece above the fireplace. So do you sort of see. Did you stop seeing them after a while?
- [57:17]
A
I mean, I think with anything you do a little bit. I think that's why people have rehangs, isn't it? Because you actually, if you just move stuff around, you notice it again. And that's what's really nice about moving from here. So most of our stuff is now gone and we are renting somewhere. It's a lovely, lovely place, but it's not ours. We're renting it and at some point we will buy again in that area. But just like taking all of the things, you know, there's a lot of things I took that I particularly love. Some of them have come back here to sort of furnish this place a little bit while it's for sale. But just putting them in a completely different environment is more of a kind of. It's like a cots Cotswold stone. Yeah. It used to be a stable and kind of hayloft where we are now. And it's converted. It was. It's on this estate called Lippiatt park that was owned by the sculptor Lynn Chadwick, and he used to use it as his studio many years ago. So it's got these kind of. Now, like, big, high ceilings and whitewashed walls and everything. But it's an old building and it doesn't look. It looks. You know, the walls are kind of curvy and the artwork would look so different there. And it really, really just refreshed it all in my mind. It was nice. I loved doing that because you do start to see things afresh, I think, as soon as you change their environment.
- [58:27]
C
But presumably most of the stuff that you've got has been swapped with other artists, you know, and things like that. Right.
- [58:33]
A
Yeah. It's mostly they're either gifts or they've. We've done. I've done a few swaps with other artists. Yeah. And then I've been given things over the years. Matt's been given lots of stuff over the years. Yeah. We've never really been in a position to put. Buy. I did buy. I bought a little after my dad died. I remember I had like a little bit. Tiny bit of money came in. I remember thinking, I don't want it. It was like 10 grand or something. And I remember thinking, I could just easily put this towards the mortgage payments, but I wanted to buy something solid with it. So I bought this little painting by Celia Hempton, which I still have and love, and that's actually in the new house. So, I mean, I've never really bought anything for more than about three or four thousand pounds. I bought that and then I bought. That's about it, I think. Tiny little painting for about 600 pounds from an American artist whose name I've forgotten. So, no, we're lucky because we haven't had to. And honestly, even if we weren't given. If we hadn't been given things by friends, we have our own work that we can put on the walls. But, yeah, it's funny, I mean, neither of us have ever been in a position to be able to afford to buy our own work. It's interesting you get that. Sometimes you get collectors getting back in touch, saying that they want to sell something and offering it to you first before we put it on auction. Would you like to buy it? I've seen, like.
- [59:40]
C
That's interesting.
- [59:40]
A
No, I can't.
- [59:43]
C
That's so interesting.
- [59:44]
A
It's funny that they assume you can afford those prices.
- [59:47]
C
Yeah. I did a podcast with Christopher LeBrun and he. His wife Charlotte is also an artist obviously as well around here, up the road they.
- [59:57]
B
Not anymore.
- [59:57]
C
They're in Somerset now. But yeah, we sold turinigo their place down the road. Beautiful house. But they're obviously an artistic duo. Slightly different generation to you. But what's it like being married to an artist and how does it work between you in terms of the work? Do you show each other the work, do you interact in that way or do you kind of leave Matt to it and vice versa?
- [60:24]
A
We work in different places, so we've got one cottage that we live in and then there's a. This tiny little other one that we rent as a kind of. Because we don't. It's a small cottage where we are lovely big high ceilings downstairs, tiny little bed, two bedrooms upstairs. And then we rent another little cottage which he has as an office and as a spare room for if we've got family or friends staying. And then there's a bit of like some garage space that I've turned into a workshop because Matt's is very desk based these days. A lot of the stuff he does is on computers and he'll go off and work with people sort of out off site. But when he's home working, he's at the computer. So we're in separate rooms but we always have lunch and meals together and we're involved in every little aspect of each other's work in some ways. But then we never. I don't know, it's a. I could come up with and actually I have come up with Matt Collishaw Artworks before, where I say, you should make this. This is something, you know. And he's actually gone ahead and made it. And I wouldn't for a second think of it as anything but his work because it was him. And I was thinking like him and I was thinking this is the exact. This is the step on from what you did before. And obviously I don't do this very often. I'm not trying to take credit for his work, but equally he knows the way that I work and he would be able to suggest things to me all the time. And he's always suggesting sort of books or other artists to look at and we go away and we get on with our own thing. We don't really come and we'll talk about titles sometimes. Sometimes he gets offered quite a lot to pitch for things for public commissions or something like that. And he'll always send me the brief so that I can kind of think about it too. And then we'll discuss it over supper. So, yeah, a lot of the things that we've come up with are sort of a joint effort. But then we go off our separate ways to actually make them. But I don't know what it's like to not be with an artist. Actually. I've never. I think even before Matt, the people I dated were artists.
- [62:17]
C
Why is that though?
- [62:19]
A
I don't know. It's just there was a very sort of specific type I was always drawn to. And I don't know why, but I was. And actually their personalities were quite different, but they were all just quite sort of creative people. And Matt, of all of them, he's the one that I could settle with because he's so. He's not got the kind of classic artist temperament, I think. Suppose you know, where he's kind of chaotic or hot headed or angry or anything. He's very, very calm and thorough and steady. So those things make him a very good kind of parent and husband. And he's very kind of. Yeah, he's very dependable in a way that maybe some of the other artists I went out with might not have been.
- [63:02]
C
What about. But would you describe yourself as dependable in that way as well?
- [63:07]
A
I think so, yeah. But I think also maybe that's something to do with our maturity. I'm sure if I'd gone out with Matt in his 20s, he wouldn't have been like that. I do think. I feel like I probably had him at a good time of his life, I don't think. You know, he'd probably have a load of exes who if they listened to this would think, what? That's not the mat behind you.
- [63:24]
C
You changed him.
- [63:25]
A
Yes, but he's really. Yeah, he's a very calm, easy presence. But he just. All he really thinks is about is his work outside of the family. His just everything's his work for him and whatever book he's reading or. But he's not something. He wouldn't want to sit and talk about art. He can't bear it. Like if he goes out to dinner or something, he'll come back and he'll go, oh God, it was awful. They just wanted to talk about art all evening. And there's nothing I'm less interested in. And yet he is on a really sort of deep fundamental level. But then he just wants to talk shit to someone over dinner, you know, he doesn't. So he's kind of he's very sort of high and low brow. It's funny, it's a good mix. I think before I would go for people who were much more extreme and very different to me. And I think it's worked quite well going for someone similar to myself. And there's always this kind of like push and pull with us, like where one of us allows the other to kind of go off and then the other one comes back and we like this week we just tag team trips to London. One of us arrives back from London, the other one will leave because we've both got quite a few things on. But you have to be quite a selfless person for that, I think. And I think he is.
- [64:25]
C
Yeah. I want to ask you about routines and rituals because I think we all have these sort of rhythms that we go through during our day around the home. So what. How do you use your home in that kind of routine way?
- [64:37]
A
I mean, the older I've got, the more I've become really dependent on routines. I find when I'm out of one now, it sometimes takes me a while to understand what's going on. I'll really. I'll start thinking, oh, I just don't feel very. I'm not saying sleeping very well. I feel a bit depressed. I don't, you know, what's. I'm suddenly really sort of like jumpy or anxious. And then it always. It's always in a school holiday when the kids are home and then the routine has been disrupted and I've realized it's because those routines really, really ground me. And I am, I am now a real creature of habit. But I think again, that's an age thing, probably because I was a lot less so when I was younger. But yeah, I get up every morning about the same time at about 6, 7. I have this lovely little analog espresso machine which makes the strongest ristrettos. And I just can't wait to get down and put the button on and put my little. Put my little cup on top to warm it up. I have my cup of tea while the cup's warming up and then I have my coffee. Everything's kind of punctuated around like meals and drinks for me. I always need to sort of like to know what I'm having for lunch, for supper that evening.
- [65:40]
C
Do you make your own lunch?
- [65:42]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I make a lot of food actually. I'm always making food for people, but I enjoy that. I find that it's kind of a creative thing, isn't it? Yeah. I don't. Everything is kind of like clockwork, actually, with us now. And I think it's also helped that I've got rid of so many things when we lived here, because we'd been two. We'd really been two households. I'd been living in Hackney. Matt had been here, blending together when I moved in. And then the children arrive and people just give children so many things and they end up with all of their stuff and they're growing out things constantly. So we just had so much stuff and it all got on top of me. And thankfully, because we were planning to move, I spent the best part of a year, I was spending a lot of my time just sorting and giving things to people, giving things to charity, selling things online, throwing things away. And I think the fewer things you have, the fewer things are being asked of you. I remember reading that in a book, book about minimalism. I got almost obsessive about it. Like, I wanted to go down to practically nothing. And I read this very extreme book by this Japanese minimalist who really had nothing. He lived in a flat with, like. All he did was put on those 3D things to watch his TV. And then he had, like, glass, a knife and a fork, or maybe chopsticks and his glasses. And that was about it. And then this book was about sort of getting to that point, which was a little bit past the point I wanted to get to. But he said one really. There was one thing in it which really stuck with me, and it was that everything you own is asking something of you. And so if you walk into a room and you've got hundreds of things, they're all saying, clean me, fix me, move me, find me, tidy me away. You know, everything. And so that it's a stressful environment to be in when you've got all of these things asking something of you. And the fewer things you have, the fewer demands are being made of you. And I've now got to a point where I just have the bare minimum of everything and now everything works like clockwork.
- [67:45]
C
How interesting.
- [67:46]
A
Yes, I'd recommend it.
- [67:47]
C
That sounds amazing. So what are those few things? Like, what's the most important thing in that grouping, apart from the coffee machine?
- [67:56]
A
The coffee machine is crucial. Like a good bottle of, like, Pomerol or some sort of, like, nice Medoc, really expensive wine. Because I don't drink much at all anymore, but if I do, it has to be really, really good. Just a few cupboards where the clothes go. I've made. Like, everyone's got their own Few drawers. I know exactly where all of that stuff goes. The kids have got one kind of like, sideboard thing and cupboard for their toys. They will go in there. I don't know. Everything's got a place. I think that's the main thing.
- [68:28]
C
But if it gets out of control and there's too much stuff everywhere, like, how does that feel to you? Is that.
- [68:36]
A
Can you not just feel out of control? I feel really out of control. And because I am, and I'm looking for stuff, I realize I spent so much time in this house looking for things, particularly in the basement. And because it's on four floors as well, you leave something upstairs and then you're in the basement when you need it. And I really needed to change that. So just, you know, my workshop, I've just. I inherited a lot of my dad's tools. When he died, Matt had a load of his own tools. I had a load of my own tools. So we had four or five of the same saws. We had, like, four. We had, like, four angle grinders and four jigsaws and thinking. But we kept all of them. So I had to, like. You know. So now we've got one of all of those things and. Yeah, and I know exactly where they all kept. And it just makes for a much simpler, more efficient life. And you just feel a lot less stressed.
- [69:24]
C
Yeah. Are you someone that's, you know, do you get anxious? Do you get depressed? Do you have your kind of down moments? How does it manifest itself for you when you have a difficult time? I suppose is the question.
- [69:38]
A
I don't think I do naturally. I think I'm a very optimistic person. I think I'm quite fortunate like that. But I did well. One of the reasons I'm leaving London was because a couple of years ago, my sister very abruptly died after six weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. And that just changed everything. I mean, everything. All of this stuff about getting rid of things and the minimalism. That's all a result of that. Everything is. And that did make me highly, highly, highly anxious throughout that period and way beyond it. And that was sort of manifested more in, like, intolerance to noise and crowds. And I felt like I was under attack or if someone slammed a door, I would just, like, burst into tears or sort of, like, cower on the floor. And I'd never experienced anything like that before. So it wasn't. It was a very good insight for me into friends of mine who have experienced things like that because I'd never really understood it properly. Until then. And it's got a lot better. But I still. I have a heightened sensitivity to noise now. I've actually. I've bought these. Someone recommended these earplug things that you can put in that just sort of. They're a bit like just doing that with your ears and they just dampen the noise a lot because having, like, a couple of young boys crashing around the house as well. There comes a point sometimes, right, I. I feel like I'm being physically attacked by it. So I do get that. And I think the being in nature. I had to get out of the city. I just couldn't. Like these buses that I'd ignored them for years. Suddenly I was terrified of them. I'd have a panic attack on the street with the children, and I'd have to call Matt. He'd have to come and literally take the kids off me because a bus would go by really suddenly like that and terrify me. So. So I'm sure those things will get better and they have got better and maybe it'll go away altogether. But still, I think I suddenly realized it was more like a clarity, I think a clarity of how unnatural it was to live like this. And I realized what was natural. I feel like I had this sort of epiphany about how to live, and that was with fewer things in the countryside. And then everything became kind of about the pursuit of that, really. And at this point. So then there was a couple of years of just dismantling everything that we'd sort of built up and. And now we're kind of rebuilding it elsewhere in a completely different shape, so.
- [71:59]
C
Fascinating. I'm really sorry to hear about that. That's.
- [72:02]
A
Thank you.
- [72:02]
C
What a tough time. I mean, it sounds like sort of hyper vigilance in a way. Yeah, Yeah.
- [72:06]
A
I think that's probably what you would describe it as.
- [72:08]
C
Yeah, yeah. Because that's major trauma. Right. Have you had therapy there or have you. Have you sought help for that, or.
- [72:15]
A
I mean, I did. I had a couple of sessions of the therapist immediately afterwards, but she said, I think it's a bit too soon because you're just grieving. And I think she was right. I don't think there was. I was just grieving. It was natural, everything I was going through. I don't know. Well, the thing is, it was all complicated. My mum then suddenly, completely out of the blue, died nine months afterwards, which was also a complete shock. But she's older. She was 74. And it was just unexpected because she wasn't ill at all. And sort of the two things blended together. And then I. I don't know. I feel like. I think you need time to process these things maybe before you get. I don't know if I need therapy. I don't really know. I think these things are natural, though, aren't they? It's all a natural response. So I'm not sure. I don't think there's anything unusual about my response to any of these things. So I'm not sure, I think, if I was indulging in some destructive behaviors, but actually, I feel like I'm, like, living in a more sort of positive and productive way than I ever have before. And I feel like I'm. I'm wasting less. I'm nicer to my friends and my family. I'm just. I spend a lot less money. I. I want for far fewer things. I feel like I've really, like, distilled life to the essence, and I understand what's important. So I'm not sure if I need. I don't know. What do you think? Do I need therapy? It sounds like I'm kind of coping all right.
- [73:30]
C
It does. No, I'm sure you are coping. I'm sure you are coping really well. That's a really, really big series of life events. I mean, I don't want to compare this directly, but I think it's interesting in the context of what you said. So my wife Faye, was at the train station a few months ago, and the guy next to her threw himself in front of the train as it.
- [73:51]
B
Came through.
- [73:54]
C
And he kind of landed back on the platform next to her, dead. And that is obviously a traumatic experience. And so she was referred to a trauma therapist. And actually it's been really quite profound for her. And she's done something called emdr.
- [74:13]
A
Oh, well, I have, yeah. I was recommended that by a few people, and I would be quite interested.
- [74:17]
C
She says it's absolutely brilliant.
- [74:19]
A
Really?
- [74:19]
C
And I'm not quite sure how it works.
- [74:21]
A
The eye movement thing is.
- [74:22]
C
The eye movement thing. And then she does something, I think, where she holds something in her hand and there's something about. I don't know, I don't get this wrong, but I think maybe it pulses or something like that. But it's essentially sort of like getting you to talk through your experiences whilst also somatically getting your body to deal with at the same time. I've done something called somatic experiencing, which is basically. It's quite similar, where you basically talk through difficult events and then the therapist effectively kind of moves your body around at the same time. So it's kind of getting it almost to loosen up physically. It's really interesting. But it does work well because when.
- [75:01]
A
You talk about these things, you normally would tense up.
- [75:03]
C
You do.
- [75:03]
B
Actually.
- [75:04]
C
There's an amazing book called the Body Keeps the Score. I've read that book, and Best of Van der Kolk basically says you hold everything physically hold it in your body. And I think, well, you'd know better than anyone, having handled so many animals over the years. But it's. You know, I almost think, oh, you do feel.
- [75:21]
A
Yeah, no, it's. You can feel it. It can make you ill, Definitely. I think all of those things. They can. And you get. You have physical pains.
- [75:27]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [75:29]
A
I don't know. I feel like maybe I'm sort of through the worst of it. I wouldn't discount doing that. But then I feel like sometimes I do think I'm quite lucky to have a brain that seems to know what's possible best for me in these times. I feel like I was kind of on autopilot and I didn't feel conscious. I haven't. I don't really feel like I've consciously made many decisions over the last few years, but I've been completely guided by something that's shown me exactly what the right things to do are and they all seem to be working so well.
- [76:04]
C
You're a natural optimist as well, as you said, which is a really good default position. But I think that the stuff around being sensitive to sound is fascinating because I found as well, the people that I know, and certainly my wife's experience as well, when you have children, that all turns up massively. I mean, we had the fights we had over the volume on the TV when our children were young. It's so interesting because I think as a young mum, you just experience everything turned up to 11.
- [76:33]
A
Yeah.
- [76:33]
C
It's hyper.
- [76:34]
A
You are hyper. Yeah. Because. Particularly when you've been breastfeeding and saying. I think at the. At night, you get used to. I remember I'd wake up, I feel like a bird or the foxes outside. Anything would just wake you up and you'd assume that your baby needed you. And I think it starts then. Yeah. And it's very. You're tuned into everything. So. Yes, I think living in a city can be really, really these tiny little sort of micro stresses. Just hearing things going by all the time. You're kind of.
- [76:59]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [77:00]
A
It's like you're being woken up or something. Constantly.
- [77:02]
C
Yeah. I've got a Book coming out soon called Homing, and I've got a whole chapter about acoustics. Basically the things you can do within your home environment to essentially mediate that.
- [77:15]
A
We need that in our place because we've got tiled floor and the acoustics are terrible in there.
- [77:20]
C
Yeah. I mean, it's. You know, we've put in the odd.
- [77:23]
A
Rug and soft furnishings, but it's probably helped it a little bit. But, yeah, it's quite jarring sometimes.
- [77:30]
C
So before we bring this to a close, I'd just love to just talk to you about the countryside, then. So you've kind of gone full circle.
- [77:36]
A
Yeah.
- [77:37]
C
Back to the Cotswolds.
- [77:39]
A
Yeah. Different area, different part of it. Much sort of further west than when I.
- [77:42]
C
Where I grew up, much further west. So I interviewed Mary Portas on the.
- [77:47]
A
She's just around the corner.
- [77:48]
C
I was gonna say she must be nearby. Right.
- [77:50]
A
She is. I think I know where she lives.
- [77:53]
C
Okay.
- [77:54]
A
Our friend who we rent from has this pub called the Woolpack, and she is in that. In the Woolpack quite a few times.
- [77:59]
C
I mean, yeah, everyone talks about the Woolpack, but I've never been to the Woolpack.
- [78:03]
A
Amazing. And he's just opened a new restaurant up in Stroud called Juliet, named after his wife. And it's even better. It's getting amazing reviews.
- [78:10]
C
Okay.
- [78:10]
A
Yes. So, thankfully, I don't even have to come to London to eat anymore.
- [78:14]
C
But that's a big thing, right? That's a really big thing. Because you think if you move out of London, you're not going to have that culture. Cultural stimulation, the same way. But have you found that, or has it been okay?
- [78:24]
A
No, I haven't found it at all because I actually. I have more cultural stimulation because I. I really. I'm one of those people who does that thing that everyone talks about when they leave London, which is you come back to London and you actually go and see a show, or you go and, like, I will come to London and do stuff that I never did when I lived here. Because I always felt when I was here, I should be here. I should be cooking. I should be down in the basement. I need to be here for the children. I can't. There was always a reason not to go into town to visit a show, unless we were doing it sometimes with the kids at the weekends. So we didn't never go to shows, but we went less and less the longer we lived here. And that's just been reversed instantly by leaving the city. So I come back and I, you know, I'll do Things and it's really nice. And I'll go to different parts of London, go to the places that I like rather than the ones I can afford to live. That's been quite a nice revelation. I go all over London to meet people now. Places I don't really know very well. Well, yeah, but no, in the countryside there's plenty of that. I don't know, it's a different kind of culture, isn't it? I mean, we're, we're off. So our friends who I just mentioned with the restaurants, they have a. This, they're growing all of the. They've got this kind of biodynamic garden where they're growing all of the fruit and veg for the restaurants. And just watching all of that, just, you know, my periphery, I find that very inspiring and stimulating. And there's a lot of interesting people doing a lot of great things out there. And you just. I think the problem with London can be a bit of a trap. You feel like there isn't anywhere else and of course there is. It's just one, one place of millions. And I don't know, I think that really hit me when Emily died. For some reason I did just that. Like, oh my God, I got to. Why am I still in London? Like, there's a whole world out there. I just thought, like, I can't just spend the rest of my life here. And years can just go by so quickly without you really noticing, just because you're quite comfortable. And actually more and more and more because there's been such an exodus of people over the years, it's becoming the norm to like have galleries and events, you know, all the things that you have in London out in the countryside, you just have to maybe get in the car to get to them instead.
- [80:24]
C
How old are your kids now?
- [80:25]
A
One's about to turn seven and the other's nine.
- [80:27]
C
Okay, so they're still young enough, right? Do you think they appreciate it, being out there?
- [80:32]
A
They do, yeah. I mean, I didn't want to wait for them to be teenagers because then they wouldn't have wanted to leave. And I think it's already dawning on the nine year old. He keeps saying, why are you selling that house? I quite liked it there actually. I still quite like to go back sometimes. And they'll be furious with us in a few years when they realize that we got rid of this place. You know, they just, they like being with you kids. I think they're fine anywhere as long as you're with them. But I can See that they're having a much bigger, better childhood there. Partly just because we're all less stressed and more easygoing and they're just outdoors all the time. And I don't have. I think the major difference for me is that we were already starting to have kind of arguments about screens and stuff here. Because when you get home in London, particularly if it's raining outside, it's a winter, and we were lucky in this place. It's massive. Most people live in small flats. When you get your kids home, it's really hard to sort of entertain them in that small space. Space for very long. And they inevitably. They just want to go on the screen. And it's just completely solved that problem overnight. For now. I know it will come back, but they just. There's so much. You just open the door and push them outside and they just find a stick and all those. Play with that for hours. So it's really, really good at the moment for them.
- [81:44]
C
That's really nice.
- [81:44]
A
I think they'll thank me for it one day, but it might take a while, but they will.
- [81:48]
C
And I think in the way that you found it stimulated, you created. It just does, I think. I mean, we live in the countryside as well. And I really identify with what you said about boredom and that simplicity of just. Actually, you kind of have to just interact with the world around you, the natural world around you, because there's not really much else to do. I think that's really good for a.
- [82:12]
A
Child because someone described might be. Matt actually was just talking about kid. Like little toddlers. As soon as they start moving around, they're like little scientists. They're just testing the limits to everything. They're testing materials, they're dropping things on the floor, they're throwing them at the wall, stabbing themselves with them, whatever it is. And they've just got limitless materials out in the countryside to do that with. And I think you do just get a much better understanding of the world and of materials and of animals by being out there.
- [82:39]
C
Yeah. Material intelligence, as Glenn Adamson calls it. I really like that term. Last question. Always ask everyone this. What does the word home mean to you? You know, there's obviously the bricks and mortar of a building, but there's also a community. There's also the entire world. Like, what does that home. Home word mean for you?
- [83:02]
A
It's just family. I mean, it really. I was reading my kids When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. I've just finished it last night with them. You know, the Judith Kerr book.
- [83:11]
C
I haven't read that one.
- [83:12]
A
It's a lovely, lovely book. Very sad, but, well, sad, but mostly uplifting, actually. But there are sad moments in it. Anyway, she writes this little sort of epilogue at the end about having written the book. And she says that she wrote the book because when she grew up in England with English children who spoke English, she really wanted them to know about her experience as a refugee leaving Berlin and. And how she lived all over the place with her in tiny little flat in Paris and, like, they stayed with friends and, you know, all their various journeys that got them finally to England. And she said her children would always respond and say, oh, Mummy, that must have been so hard for you. And she said, but I wanted them. I wanted to write a book so that they could understand that it wasn't hard for me at all, that it was all a big adventure for me and that all that mattered was that I was with my brother and with my parents and I never felt like a refugee because they were always with me. And that just sort of struck home because I think that's. That's how I feel, really. As long as I can take those three along with me, I. I think I could make a nice home anywhere.
- [84:15]
C
Brilliant answer.
- [84:16]
A
Thank you.
- [84:16]
C
Thanks so much, Polly. Absolutely fascinating. Really enjoyed it.
- [84:20]
A
Waffle on a bit, don't I? You'll have to edit that down.
- [84:22]
C
It's a great waffle.
- [84:25]
B
Huge thanks to Polly and thanks to all of you for listening. If you want to watch the video version of the podcast, you'll find it on our YouTube channel, which is omingwithmat. And you can also watch a full tour of Polly's home by subscribing to Homing on patreon. Head to patreon.com homingwithmat thank you so much to everyone who's signed up so far. It really is appreciated. If you can spare a second to give us a quick rating or review, we'd be very grateful. Of course, every podcaster will tell you it makes a massive difference because it helps other people discover the show. And don't forget, you can follow Homing on Instagram @homingwithmat to see what's coming up. Homing is an independent podcast produced by Pod Shop, with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again for listening and talk to you very soon.
- [85:16]
C
Bye for now.