Neither Here nor There
    I helped Margrét move her stuff down to Brighton, first to a rather dismal guesthouse with a nasty landlady at James Street, and then to her more permanent lodgings up Freshfield Road. The old lady there was a Mrs Rodgers, a motherly old thing who was very nice to both of us. With me still at Corsham and Margrét in Brighton it meant a lot of commuting at weekends, usually by train but sometimes by coach when the money was running out. Margrét and I discovered that we had very similar interests on the art side of things and soon started working together. Once, on a Sunday evening when I had just got back from Brighton, I was waiting for the bus at the station at Chippenham. To my surprise, Rosemary Ellis arrived there in her Land-Rover to meet some people at the station. She saw me and offered me a lift back to Corsham with the others. But it was a very silent drive back and I could tell that I was not in Rosemary’s good books. On more than one occasion I got ticked off for being away at weekends. Nobody ever even thought to ask whether I had been actually working down at Brighton. On a few occasions Margrét came to Corsham and was once accosted by Rosemary who accused her of wasting my time! This was so extraordinarily rude and inappropriate that I took Rosemary to one side and told her my mind with no holds barred. I was really very angry which doesn’t happen often. I thought that the incident would probably herald the end of my days at Corsham, but somehow I was suffered to finish the course. This Brighton thing had the advantage that I had the benefit of the facilities at both Corsham and Brighton. James Tower turned a blind eye to my presence there at weekends because he saw that we were doing something worthwhile and Margrét and I were soon producing work and taking part in exhibitions together. The first of these was the big Play Orbit show that Jasia Reichardt (ex-Corsham staff) co-ordinated at the ICA in London. We produced a huge praxinoscope which we used for mixing images and colours. There’s a picture of it on our website at the top of the section ‘Our work’. Peter Juerges and I were the official entrants on behalf of BAA. There’s another chap mentioned in the catalogue of Play Orbit, Roger Deakins, but I’m afraid he has completely disappeared from my memory. I can neither put a face to him nor remember what part he played in the project. Sorry Roger if you’re reading this! However Margrét was no longer BAA and never got credit for her considerable share in the work of producing the strips. We have been working together ever since and you can see a lot of our stuff on our website.