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Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
JG Ballard, Charles Dickens and JK Rowling have all inhabited properties that were up for grabs – for the right price
• For a house completely intertwined with the life and work of a writer, few can match the 1930s semi in Shepperton, Surrey, where JG Ballard spent 49 years raising his children and writing futuristic, dystopian novels, some of which took their suburban setting from the author’s sleepy base south-west of London.
After Ballard’s death in 2009 it went on sale this month for £320,000, despite protest by fans that the three-bedroom home, which is in a somewhat dilapidated state, should instead become a museum. It has now been withdrawn from sale to be rented out, with a new family due to move in this month.
• While one of Charles Dickens’ London homes is now a museum dedicated to the writer, you can get your hands on the clifftop home in Broadstairs, Kent where he and his family holidayed for 22 years – if you have £2m to spare. Dickens wrote David Copperfield while staying in the now Grade II-listed turreted mansion and the views supposedly inspired Bleak House, after which the home was named following Dicken’s death. If that’s not enough, according to the estate agents it was also visited by another Victorian literary giant, Wilkie Collins.
• If JK Rowling is your obsession then you’ve just missed out. Church Cottage, the mid-19th century Gothic home near Chepstow, Gwent, where the author grew up, has gone under offer only weeks after being put up for sale for £400,000.
Apart from more traditional attractions such as a well-tended garden and wooden floors, temptations included an inscription on a bedroom windowframe reading “Joanne Rowling slept here circa 1982″ and a cupboard under the stairs, perhaps the inspiration for Harry Potter’s bedroom. There’s even a trapdoor in the living room.
Posted in Books, Culture, House News, Money, News, Property, The Guardian, UK news | Comments Closed
Sunday, July 17th, 2011
JG Ballard’s house is on the market – and it has been suggested that fans club together to turn it into a museum
With all the fuss over the prospective sale of JK Rowling’s childhood home (Look – a cupboard under the stairs! It must have inspired Harry Potter!), not enough attention is being paid to what seems to me a far more important literary property story.
JG Ballard‘s house in Shepperton, London, is up for sale. This is where the writer lived and wrote from 1960 until his death in 2009. You don’t need to blether about cupboards under stairs to make the case for its importance. Shepperton held a vital place in Ballard’s imagination: he was drawn to its commercial nullity, its suburban Englishness crossed by shabby concrete carriageways, its proximity to those in-between places, such as airports and orbital roads, in which he thrived.
It was around Shepperton that the protagonist of Crash, his novel about people being sexually aroused by car crashes, drove. In another novel, he wrote: “The town centre consisted of little more than a supermarket and shopping mall, a multi-storey car-park and filling station. Shepperton, known to me only for its film studios, seemed to be the everywhere of suburbia, the paradigm of nowhere.”
It’s strange that this strangest of writers should have been so devoted to so ordinary a patch of ground. But it’s also a clue to how his life shaped his gift. The amazing thing about Miracles of Life, his 2008 autobiography, was that what seemed to be outlandish dream images in his early work – empty swimming pools and abandoned airstrips, the juxtaposition of good manners with outright psychosis, the strange conjunctions of the brutal and the decorative – were actually the fruit of his wartime childhood in China.
When he came to Shepperton, Ballard was fascinated by the apparent perversity of civilisation pretending to be civilised. Here was his subject. Ballard went to where the weird was and stayed there. But what he saw as weird, we see as normal.
The subtitle of his autobiography characterises the arc of his life as being “from Shanghai to Shepperton”. He liked to play himself. A friend of mine, who interviewed him a few years back, found herself inside his house “staring warily at a length of yellowing net curtain in the window of the most dilapidated house in the row. The garden is overgrown and weeds threaten to bind the tyres of a silver Ford Granada to the driveway. ‘I’ll be looking out for you at 2.30, peering through my curtains,’ Ballard had said earlier that day.”
Simon Sellars, who runs the Ballardian website, has suggested fans club together to turn the house into a museum. The asking price is £320,000, and the house is described as “in need of refurbishment”. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to ensure that this “refurbishment” never takes place? When I looked at the estate agent’s website, I could find no mention of the house’s literary connection – but there was a button you could click for a slideshow. I imagined it would nip briskly through some bright photographs of the different rooms inside the house. But it was actually more like an installation-art tribute to the great man.
A pop-up window appears. There’s a photograph of the front of the house, a red-brick semi with a shabby yellow door and uneven nets in the curved window. It hangs there for a few seconds, then vanishes, to be replaced by a photograph of a completely overgrown garden. The image zooms towards the foliage. Then the original image reappears and we zoom in again. Then we have the front of the house again, zooming in. House, garden, house, house, house, garden. It’s mechanical, random, impersonal, and rather sinister. What’s lurking in that foliage? What’s this anxious zoom trying to show us behind the net curtains?
It is brilliantly Ballardian. His editor once told me that Ballard saw his role, as a writer, to be the man standing on the hard shoulder of a particularly hairy curve on the motorway of modernity, holding up a bent cardboard sign on which were scrawled words to the effect of “TROUBLE AHEAD!” or “BRIDGE OUT!” If we can’t buy the house, we could at least have a whipround for a statue of the man holding just such a placard. He could be hanging over the side of Laleham Road, just where it passes over the M3.
Posted in Books, Comment, Culture, Fiction, House News, JG Ballard, Literary fiction, Property, Science fiction, The Guardian | Comments Closed
Thursday, May 19th, 2011
When Black Sheep House featured on the popular architectural programme it was a case of triumph over adversity. Now it is on the market for a fraction of the rebuilding price
In pictures: Black Sheep House
Black Sheep House on the Island of Harris won the Grand Designs home of the year in 2008. Kevin McCloud said what he loved about it was that it was almost as if the owners had gone up the mountain, collected bits of it and brought them back down and built their house out of them.
Irregular shaped stone walls are topped with a flower strewn turf roof; inside, the one-and-a-half-storey kitchen and living space have a venerable feel, the bay windows offering heavenly views over the Hebridean mountains and shoreline.
Winning the popular television competition was a high point for self-builders Christine and Pete Hope – but it hasn’t been a passport to capital gain. The unique two-bed house is on the market for offers in excess of £225,000 – about half the current rebuilding cost of £440,000.
From the outset Black Sheep House has been a financial rollercoaster. The Hopes left Yorkshire for the island in 2003, armed with a budget of £50,000 and spade loads of determination.
They set their sights on a ruined traditional black house which, latterly, had served as a sheep shed. As an experienced dry stone waller, Pete was able to carry out the bulk of the work himself, while former social worker Christine trawled the internet to source building supplies at bargain prices.
Despite a considerable degree of cooperation and goodwill from local tradesmen and architect Stuart Bagshaw, the project required Herculean effort. Pete says: “If I had assessed that I’d have even half the amount of hard physical labour ahead of me that this project demanded, I would have refused to begin. But having started we were determined to see it through.”
Building costs escalated to £130,000, which necessitated the property being let out to holidaymakers in a bid to recoup costs. During peak season visitors pay £1,280 a week.
So why is it on the market at such a modest price? A desultory housing market and the property’s far flung location are two obvious factors. However, a rather unimaginative home evaluation report (required in Scotland) fails to acknowledge the mezzanine sleeping space and describes the house as a one-bed bungalow worth £180,000.
Posted in Blogposts, Culture, guardian.co.uk, Home improvements, House News, House prices, Money, Property, Scotland, Television, Television & radio | Comments Closed
Monday, May 16th, 2011
When Black Sheep House featured on Grand Designs it was a case of triumph over adversity. Now it is on the market for a fraction of the renovation price
Posted in Culture, Editorial, guardian.co.uk, Home improvements, Homes, House News, House prices, Life and style, Money, Property, Television, Television & radio | Comments Closed
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
The banter in this sitcom about a painter and decorator and his assistant is quite true to life, finds builder Alan Rowing
I did laugh a few times while watching this sitcom, about a guy called Ollie (played by Will Mellor) who takes over his father’s painting and decorating business. Like me, Ollie drives a white van, though I’ve had lots of different coloured vans over the 40 years I’ve been a builder. The dashboard of his van is covered with litter – food cartons, bits of paper. Mine’s not quite as messy as that, but it’s getting there.
The banter between Ollie and his assistant, Darren, is quite true to life: we do like to have a laugh, and we’ve all got nicknames, though I couldn’t possibly divulge what mine is. But I’m not sure I’d take that level of lip off anyone I work with. The fact that Ollie’s living in his father’s shadow feels quite real, though. I work with my son, and I do always check up on what he’s doing.
In the second episode, a turf war develops between Ollie and some other builders. I have seen that sort of thing happen. I once worked in the north of England, doing shop-fitting, and it was pretty clear that they weren’t that keen on us southerners. There’s also quite a clash in London between British builders and those coming over from eastern Europe.
In one of the houses Ollie’s working in, a couple starts having sex while he’s there. I’ve had that happen a few times – you just have to pretend you can’t hear them. And I’ve also met quite a few old ladies just as eccentric as Irene, the woman Darren takes out from the old people’s home for a ride in the van. One 80-year-old woman I worked for was a complete alcoholic, and another had Alzheimer’s and would sometimes walk into the room stark naked. That wasn’t at all funny, though – just sad.
It is good to see a programme that shows a white van man as more than just someone who cuts you up on the road. I don’t think of myself, or other builders, as white van men, though – I tend to use that term for courier drivers, or people in hire cars. They’re the ones you want to watch out for.
White Van Man is on BBC3 on Tuesdays at 10pm.
Posted in BBC, Comment, Culture, Home improvements, House News, Media, Property, Television, Television & radio, The Guardian | Comments Closed
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If we can’t buy JG Ballard’s former home, then we should at least erect a statue to him
Sunday, July 17th, 2011JG Ballard’s house is on the market – and it has been suggested that fans club together to turn it into a museum
With all the fuss over the prospective sale of JK Rowling’s childhood home (Look – a cupboard under the stairs! It must have inspired Harry Potter!), not enough attention is being paid to what seems to me a far more important literary property story.
JG Ballard‘s house in Shepperton, London, is up for sale. This is where the writer lived and wrote from 1960 until his death in 2009. You don’t need to blether about cupboards under stairs to make the case for its importance. Shepperton held a vital place in Ballard’s imagination: he was drawn to its commercial nullity, its suburban Englishness crossed by shabby concrete carriageways, its proximity to those in-between places, such as airports and orbital roads, in which he thrived.
It was around Shepperton that the protagonist of Crash, his novel about people being sexually aroused by car crashes, drove. In another novel, he wrote: “The town centre consisted of little more than a supermarket and shopping mall, a multi-storey car-park and filling station. Shepperton, known to me only for its film studios, seemed to be the everywhere of suburbia, the paradigm of nowhere.”
It’s strange that this strangest of writers should have been so devoted to so ordinary a patch of ground. But it’s also a clue to how his life shaped his gift. The amazing thing about Miracles of Life, his 2008 autobiography, was that what seemed to be outlandish dream images in his early work – empty swimming pools and abandoned airstrips, the juxtaposition of good manners with outright psychosis, the strange conjunctions of the brutal and the decorative – were actually the fruit of his wartime childhood in China.
When he came to Shepperton, Ballard was fascinated by the apparent perversity of civilisation pretending to be civilised. Here was his subject. Ballard went to where the weird was and stayed there. But what he saw as weird, we see as normal.
The subtitle of his autobiography characterises the arc of his life as being “from Shanghai to Shepperton”. He liked to play himself. A friend of mine, who interviewed him a few years back, found herself inside his house “staring warily at a length of yellowing net curtain in the window of the most dilapidated house in the row. The garden is overgrown and weeds threaten to bind the tyres of a silver Ford Granada to the driveway. ‘I’ll be looking out for you at 2.30, peering through my curtains,’ Ballard had said earlier that day.”
Simon Sellars, who runs the Ballardian website, has suggested fans club together to turn the house into a museum. The asking price is £320,000, and the house is described as “in need of refurbishment”. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to ensure that this “refurbishment” never takes place? When I looked at the estate agent’s website, I could find no mention of the house’s literary connection – but there was a button you could click for a slideshow. I imagined it would nip briskly through some bright photographs of the different rooms inside the house. But it was actually more like an installation-art tribute to the great man.
A pop-up window appears. There’s a photograph of the front of the house, a red-brick semi with a shabby yellow door and uneven nets in the curved window. It hangs there for a few seconds, then vanishes, to be replaced by a photograph of a completely overgrown garden. The image zooms towards the foliage. Then the original image reappears and we zoom in again. Then we have the front of the house again, zooming in. House, garden, house, house, house, garden. It’s mechanical, random, impersonal, and rather sinister. What’s lurking in that foliage? What’s this anxious zoom trying to show us behind the net curtains?
It is brilliantly Ballardian. His editor once told me that Ballard saw his role, as a writer, to be the man standing on the hard shoulder of a particularly hairy curve on the motorway of modernity, holding up a bent cardboard sign on which were scrawled words to the effect of “TROUBLE AHEAD!” or “BRIDGE OUT!” If we can’t buy the house, we could at least have a whipround for a statue of the man holding just such a placard. He could be hanging over the side of Laleham Road, just where it passes over the M3.
Posted in Books, Comment, Culture, Fiction, House News, JG Ballard, Literary fiction, Property, Science fiction, The Guardian | Comments Closed