London Transportation

On Sunday we visited the Rosemary and Clifford Ellis exhibition now running at the gallery here. The above is one of a set of posters for the London Underground of the 1930s. The rest are called 'Wood', 'River', 'Down', etc.

Just imagine sitting in a gloomy tube station in pre-war, subterranean, smoggy London and being transported (metaphorically) into the countryside by one of these wonderful posters. The tradition of commissioning artists who actually use paint to produce evocative adverts encouraging people to use public transport run by the nation - with no competition - died out sometime in the 1970s. Recently GWR has made some posters and videos which hark back to those times, but the unmistakeable flatness of computer graphics are all over them.

If you are anywhere near this exhibition you really must see it - it is charming and uplifting. It is easy for me to suggest this - I live 50 feet away from it.

Yesterday, an old friend and colleague sent me the catalogue for his exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the Guildford School of Art 1968 sit-in. It is packed full of photos from the time - there's a young Jack Straw, there's John and Yoko, there's me! - and reproductions of the work of some of the artists who attended all those years ago, but the best thing for me is a diary of events kept safe for 50 years by one of the students who recorded it all at the time. Being 16 years old then,  only key events remain in my memory, so it is good to have the evidence to show that I was not - as my parents insisted - brain-washed by a load of communists with another agenda. No wonder you lot think of me as a left-wing extremist.

Remember the elderly lady, Marion, who H.I. and I suspected had been taken to hospital last Christmas? That the hospital refused to confirm or deny that she was an inmate because we were not relatives? I know that her family were estranged from her for reasons which are too shocking and depressing to go into here. Well, I have news.

Every now and then over the last few months I have made another effort to trace her, then it occurred to me about a week ago that a friend of mine's brother lives in the same semi-sheltered accommodation that Marion did. I contacted my friend in Wales who contacted his brother, and two days ago received the news that Marion had been taken to a proper nursing home. I looked up nursing homes in this area, and was dismayed at how many there are. Marion had turned into a needle in a smallish haystack.

Last night her son - who we had not met - called us to say that Marion died a couple of days ago. We had left it a tiny bit too late to give her the copy of the drawing she made some years ago at one of H.I.'s classes which was stolen shortly after she had done it. I don't know why she didn't call us. Apparently H.I.'s name was on the top of the list for people to be contacted in the event of her death.

Poor old Marion.