Metamedia

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There’s a cake shop next door, a giant hamster over the road and soldiers are fighting zombies on the roof. MARY HAMILTON welcomes you to the new-look Evening News.

Breaking news: the postman has delivered a letter.

That’s how most of the news comes in to the Home Sweet Home offices of the Evening News. It’s delivered by a tall man in short trousers, a flat cap and socks, who leaves the envelopes leaning up against the front canopy of the 20cm cardboard building.

I built the office myself, from flat-pack cutout to fully-fledged busy office building complete with newspaper bundles and Plasticene journalists, sharing glue, card and colouring pens with neighbours and strangers.

I even recreated Bernard Meadows’ eyecatching bronze ball sculptures, carefully rolling and squeezing yellow moulding clay and poking it gingerly with a pencil, before giving the rest of my clay to an excited six-year-old who wanted to make bees for her garden.

It is part of a performance – or perhaps an exhibition – called Home Sweet Home, the brainchild of Goldsmiths graduates Abigail Conway and Lucy Hayhoe, in which participants build their own city from flat-pack parts and then experience its evolution as it fills with people playing along.

Watching the tiny town sprout from a black and white canvas into a riot of colour in the extravagant surroundings of Blackfriars Hall was both surreal and sublime, as bizarre buildings and peculiar personalities developed thanks to the imagination of neighbours.

But when the letters began to arrive the town took on a new and magical dimension, with stories, greetings, and feats of collective imagination all emerging thanks to the postal service and the presenters at the radio station.

My letter reads: “Dear Editor, An escaped swan ate my shoes!  Please put it in your newspaper! Yours, Joz Norris, No. 188”.

Immediately I spring into action. I post a breaking news update on the billboard outside the office – crafted from matchsticks, card and successive layers of paper posters – and dash off a return letter asking for more detail about the attack.

Over time, petitions spring up on the community notice board. A campaign to build a public swimming pool gathers pace. Disgruntled residents try to force an election. A little girl who runs a flower shop donates a sponge-and-cocktail-stick floral display to my office.

A small zombie outbreak spreads and threatens other city properties, so the Evening News drafts in a local militia to fight them off. Other businesses welcome the zombies, selling them vintage clothes and inviting them in to a night club.

And I get another letter from Joz saying that he’s bought another pair of Doc Martens but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to look a swan in the eye ever again.

The whole experience is a testament to the power of play. Adults and children alike tap into the storytelling possibilities of the town, expressing their personalities through their houses and opening them up as the community evolves around them.

While some people come along, build houses and leave, those who stay build stories around their houses, and the whole community evolves and changes as the project progresses.

A giant hamster in the back garden of one house is asked to join the Spiegeltent as a performer. A few hours later he has moved to the circus with signs advertising his upcoming performances.

I spend the weekend doing what journalists do: asking questions, writing down stories, monitoring the notice board and answering letters, preparing for a burst of activity on Sunday night as I put the Home Sweet Home edition of the Evening News together.

The following day, when I return to Blackfriars Hall with a stack of miniature newspapers under my arm, the Spiegeltent has disappeared, replaced by a giant hamster run with tunnels, hoops and a swimming pool.

I arrive at the office to discover someone has stuck a giant red ball to my door, in imitation of the large inflatable ball currently touring Norwich as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. They are planted on the church, the fire station and the city hall, too.

For a short time this miniature cardboard community has been incredibly real. It has had action, politics, feuds, joy, fear and anger, and the people who created it have told hundreds of tiny stories that were, for a while, incredibly important, as they literally changed the way their city was constructed.

As the houses were dismantled and returned to their owners, I felt deeply privileged to have been present at the birth and the death of Norwich’s smallest suburb, and to have been able to tell just a few of the stories the residents created.

A version of this article and its accompanying miniature newspaper
were originally published in the Evening News
(www.eveningnews24.co.uk).

Posted via email from InterMediaMary

It’s not the most beautiful meal in the world, but it’s one of my favourites: garlic soup.

The idea for this meal came from book called Outlaw Cook by John Thorne – both the initial recipe and the approach I tend to take when cooking it. The recipe as given is very simple, based on a Spanish dish eaten by those too poor to eat much else, and nicknamed ‘Water of Life’ for its heartening, comforting qualities.

One thread running through the book I the idea that cuisine is intensely personal. Outlaw Cook tells John Thorne’s own story of learning to want to eat and cook well – from eating packaged foods in bed to the discovery of pasta to building a bread oven in his back yard. And though my journey has been different there are elements that are very familiar to me. When I stood in my own kitchen for the first time age 16 I too had no idea where to begin.

Perhaps the hardest thing to learn so far has been how to improvise, understanding textures, tastes and flavours so that it becomes possible to conceive of a taste, go to the kitchen and create it from raw materials. Outlaw Cook was the first food book I read to revel in that sense of play in the kitchen. And that’s what garlic soup is about for me.

There are a few elements that remain constant every time I make it.

Garlic is the base, usually a combination of fresh and smoked, sometimes pickled, generally crushed or very finely chopped. Often there will be beans involved – kidney or butter beans usually, but sometimes others. Almost always I will grill strong cheese on top of stale bread and line the bowl with it, pouring soup on top. Rarely if ever will I add anything to thicken it.

The rest is pure invention every time, and a glorious way to bring fun to cookery.

To make today’s incarnation:

Crush together pink and smoked garlic, bird’s eye chilli, dried red chilli, sun dried tomatoes, sea salt and fresh thyme, to make a paste.

Sweat the paste in butter with bacon lardons and finely diced shallots.

Add a tin of butter beans, water, tomato purée and vegetable buillion, and simmer till it is tasty, not watery but not too thick or reduced.

In the mean time grill a slice of stale bread spread with tomato purée and topped with mature cheddar.

Serve the soup ladled over the bread and garnished with cherry tomatoes and a few very thin slices of fresh pink garlic.

Posted via email from InterMediaMary

She walks to town. I make maps from her iPhone’s footprints.
Her geocodes build a city for me to explore. Height. Plans. Street View. Sales. She pushes a cold nose up against hard glass, desiring. Each window is a tab.
I stride her steps at home between the hours. She sees new graffiti. I see blurred cyclists. She sees the grit and people. I see usability.
She looks up.

At night I move my small hands across the vast city of her skin.

Posted via email from InterMediaMary