Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Helena, goes up to a man standing under the awning of a carpet shop in an Istanbul market. As she approaches the man is laughing at something the shopkeeper next to him has said. He is thick set. He has two day stubble on his chin and when he laughs Helena can see he's missing a tooth. She thinks: "I've made a mistake." The shopkeeper glances up: "How can I help you? Would you like a carpet?" He grabs the woman's wrist and pulls her inside through the archway. "I haven't come about carpets." "100 dollars for this," he unfolds a closely woven rug, "is a very good price. The best. Where are you from? Serbia? Germany? Italy? Helena wrenches her hand away. The grip of the man leaves a hot painful, band on her wrist. "A taxi driver told me to come here." She thinks again: "I've been stupid. I've made a mistake." "He brought you to buy my carpets. Naturally. They are very good carpets. The best.&

To me both the the 70s and 80s are as recent as if they were yesterday and perhaps that's why I am so horrified by the idea of a Conservative government. The Conservatives in the 80s were not just privatisers, they didn't just open the gates of hell when they deregulated the City, attracting all the money into it that might otherwise have gone into British manufacturing, the Conservatives were supporters of the Apartheid regime and they believed that all socialists and communists were " the enemy within". The Young Tories in those days, ( Cameron was too young to be one of them), made T-Shirts referring to  saying: Hang Nelson Mandela . This was the age when Britain didn't just coat-tail on US wars for resources and strategic advantage as it does today, it was a time when when the Conservatives actually turned Britain into ground zero. According to CND at the time the Tories allowed Reagan's mob to site more than a 100 military bases on British soil,

Oxfam 274 Banbury Road Oxford TEL : 54333 (STD Code 00X2) 14th August 1969 Darling Mom and Dad,

Loa Derelict Mission off main road to south, 20 miles north of Uganda border, Middle of Nowhere, c/o Nobody. Saturday 1.45 pm Towards the town of Yei My Darling, I hope this letter gets to you quickly enough to arrive before I do. I left for Loa from Juba yesterday within minutes of dashing off that quick covering letter to my long report. I hardly had time to bolt a meal down before we were bumping down to the ferry in the Landrover... I've just finished the lunch washing up, standing on the stoep of the totally derelict mission house (no doors, no windows,, walls showing 11 years of total neglect, except occasional billetting by Northern soldiers , or Anyanya ) swishing plate around in the water from the Nile five miles away. The water comes from a large trailer which is also on the stoep. In front of me is the enourmous church, also derelict. Big cross at the entrance with left bar shot away by northern bullets. Coloured wooden purple heart Jesus with fac

"The finest British and International education, but with an Indian soul."  Right opposite from us was the American International School (now the American Embassy School) . The whole place was sealed off from the Indian environment. Inside the students lived in that artificial smug of Americana. Even the light was imported. It was nothing like the friendly International School in Dar-es Salaam.  I imagine the architect of one of these enclosures coming to the buildings of the American International  School in New Delhi and sniffing at them like a chef: "To much curry. Get rid of it. More mustard and ketchup aerosol spray, please. More basketball rubber. I want to hear the click of air hockey pucks, the squeak of sneakers on pine. More light-blue denim. Where are the jocks and the cheerleaders? Do we have enough of them. Yes? You, what are you doing here?  He looks a bit scrawny. A little too Indian. This ain't India, man. Kick the fucker out....now."

My parents carefully researched and decided that the best school to send me to in 1973 was a School called Friend's School Great Ayton in Teeside. Everything seemed right for them. It was set in the most beautiful countryside. It was a Quaker School. It was quite small and the staff, especially Mr Oughton.

Photo by Des Willie