Jo Blogs...









"Scratchy wood!"

I love old bits of wood, and the way you can see different colours of paint peeping through that hint at another life and history. Old boats, doors, windows, gateposts, signs and sheds the natural interplay of the new and old colours throws up a seemingly accidental complement of the present by the past – it says…
‘We, here in the present, appreciate all the years you’ve been through, wood; and that times were better , slower and.. I don’t know, just better, everyone knew their place, and people all were happier;
The past says…
‘we leave you this tantalising dash of old colour so that you remember us.’

Infact, I can’t resist stuff that is, how shall I say, falling to bits. We have a number of ancient oak panels on the walls in each of our giftshops, Sugarbag blue and Tickled Pink, with layers of peeling paint from behind which the deep shades of an old oil-painting of shadowy angels, and sea-gods are hinted at. The wood we got from a huge forest yard in Kent, from the discard pile, hidden behind a wall, and look they started life as oak fences, but must have been imposing as they are so solid –I see them guarding the portals of a spanish hacienda, or holding back the crowds from the winter palace in the Russian revolution. We got our painter Jim McCarthy to achieve the impossible. He was chief set painter at the BBC and can paint literally anything on anything –‘Jim, I want Leonardos’ angels, and some demons from the ceiling of the globe theatre appearing from the old wood as if they are lost, worn old masters that have been forgotten.’ No problem. 

Maybe it’s an English thing but when I see a nice stretch of Victorian suburban houses and then one that is delapitated with ivy coming through the brickwork, slates hanging off and peeling layers of paint on the doors and windows, my heart leaps. ‘I bet I know which one you like,’ Anna will say’ exasperated. The whiff of dry-rot stirs the loins, I can imagine doing it up, restoring former glory, the decaying stairwells and holes in the floors, empty rooms and broken plaster – all telling a tale of generations of previous inhabitants and their ghosts.

Where did this start?
My dad would drag us all the way across the country, if my memory is correct, to wander round any National Trust property that we hadn’t seen before and some that we had. Standing behind a rope in a simulated Victorian living room, staring at their coal scuttles, no fire in the grate, and if you were really lucky some bright spark might have set up a half-eaten wax lunch to really fire the imagination I’m not sure , but I think we were supposed to envisage ‘papa off hunting lepers in the congo’, and little tommy playing with a hoop and stick, the proceeds of the empire that the sun never set on, lining the mantelpiece. I remember absolute gloom in the Bronte’s front room, with tiny rooms, low ceilings, and probably an open notebook on the table. And yet all those gloomy leaded windowed, domed ceilinged, beamed darkly painted baronial museums must have stuck. The delapitation of the ancient wooden orangeries must have invaded my psyche at a vulnerable age. I like to see the colours peeping through, I love stripped wooden floors that might be original. I am absolutely haunted by a few places I have been under my own steam since my dad stopped making me go – we stayed in the lodgehouse of Sissinghurst castle, country seat of some friends, and I am still in thrall to the memories of the casual way the place had been lived in down the years, everything was original, as old as hell and used, tatty but without any self-conciousness - nothing had been destroyed, but handed on.

A friend took me to Hunters Hotel in Wiklow, Irelands oldest preserved coachhouse, (www.hunters.ie/) and we were in the bar celebrating his 40^{th birthday –I noticed scratches on the glass where people had left messages.}

<sup>' Wow,' i said, 'this one says...
'I was here 1946!' ‘
‘That’s nothing ..’said the barman, ‘this one…’ and he pointed to swirly but clear writing nearby on the window..
‘Is from during the uprising of 1770. ‘’
I was stunned. The weight of the past was there in the room, some other soak just like me had been sitting by the same peat fire chucking back the 30 year-olds in the same seat 200 years ago, and it was the scratches that brought it home to me.


And it s not just me
We all love’ heritage’ in this country and that love goes all the way down to the colours and textures that we tend to choose – the Farrow and Balls that are now so popular that B and Q have them, and tiny flats the length of the country are bedecked in ‘ cornforth white,’ or ‘slavetrade magenta’. We love to feel our history, or an imagined one, close by , just below the surface. It is better than the present, has more dignity and morality, otherwise why we do things like restore barns!!</sup>

I have had a chance to see this from a distant perspective, having lived in Ireland for some while. The Irish way of looking at things was a shock to me when I first went -partly because it threw our own behaviour into a strange light when the old farmhouse whose roof was caving in the middle of a field that I would covet for its ‘potential ‘ got a bit crap and broken, what normal people might consider ‘beyond repair’ you might get breeze blocks, build a huge barnlike house next to it, plaster the fecker and paint it cream inside and out – bish bash bosh.
‘What, and leave that little gem of cottage go to ruin?’
Yes, and its much cheaper too.

The equivalent experience to the National Trust houses of my youth was the tableau vivant that I came across in Donegal in a museum house recently with its low beamed roof, and stripped wooden floor was a lively re-enactment of someone’s livingroom during the famine, and a very haunting voiceover-of a child talking of his short life and early death! It was stripped back alright, there were wax dummies in rags and it was extremely harrowing. You would not want to paint your house to look like it or remind yourself it happened, or anything. In fact, it made you want brand spanking new aluminium taps, marble silky floors a self cleaning oven and doors probably made of shiny unscratched bauxite.
I remember noticing the direct application of this phenomenon way down in the country in cork, at an ancient wood panelled pub and it was also the local shop, and post office, and had cereals for sale in the window. It was something out of a timewarp, not a tourist attraction, people really used it as it seemed to be. Then in London a chain of pubs arrived called O’neills and they were characterised by the having old brown postal packages on the shelves in the window, bicycles above the bar, and ancient agricultural tools in the toilets. Our nanny who had just arrived in London from deepest Kerry said that she was embarrassed when they laughed her out the door for asking for stamps.
Everywhere you go in Britain is ruled by these principles – the posher it is, the more knackered it is, as long as it is just kept teetering on the edge of crumbling destruction. There is much product out there that sits somewhere on the sliding scale of ‘how battered is it,’ starting from the ‘it’s obviously- completely-new , but-we’ve-painted-some-scratches-on-to-give-it- class’, all the way to ‘ we’ve-made-your-cupboard-from-damp-fence-posts-found-on-a-moor, stamped-all-over-them, and sprayed-the-corners-with-glue-and-mould!’

　
But it works, design wise the fantastic contrast of old and new, or of functional items like farm implements taken out of context so that their design jumps out, or an old railway clock that carries its history in its peeling paint, and speaks of Trevor Howard dashing through the steam across the platform for a cuddle, in black and white, even though it is now on your living room wall above the sofa. Roger Lascelles (below) supplies these to big outfits like Byron Burgers who buy a huge railway clock for each new branch they open, for added character and 'feel.'

Film-maker Derek Jarman's garden, (www.flickr.com/photos/angusf/sets/656542) where he lived out his final years on the stoney wind-swept shores of Dungeness is an inspiration in his use of old iron farm implements as decoration between the kale, and wild-flowers take on an iconic monumental nature. 

'Oneworld' are a company we use in Sugarbag Blue a lot because their homewares as they tread the fine line with frames and beautiful household items between things having a treasured worn feel, and being over-done.

I remember a girlfriends’ parents were considered ‘nouveaux’ because with all the hard earned money they had acquired from making maraschino cherries, millions and millions of them in their Birmingham bottling factory, they had splashed out and gone for the manor house look – black and white beams, a minstrel’s gallery, the lot – but I still remember the undercurrent of scorn which followed the poor critters because the effect was manufactured not ‘restored from a pile of actual, medieval rubble. oh no that wouldn’t do. But who can blame them for wanting the effect without the hassle of Grade 11 listing, dust and weevles?
What I’m rambling about is that the worn interior, the distressed wood, or as my wife Anna calls it ‘Shabby Living’speaks of our history. But then it depends on what history means to you, and indeed what your history really was. For many of us, I think it is giving depth to the present, and a set of old iron clothes hooks that are reminiscent of the big house, and days when everything was laboriously washed by hand is a lovely welcome counterpoint to the fact that we don’t do that anymore, but we can preserve and admire the handmade craftsmanship, let it bring the present and the past into harmony – a bit like ‘Downtown Abbey.’

A Taste of Sugar

I keep trying to reread  the play written about Earlsfield, ‘Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World,’ hoping to recognise my area in this early work by the later multi-million selling author, Louis de Bernieres,  written when he was a young teacher working locally, but it bears no resemblance to anything I know.

Apart from being a patronising and unrealistic picture of everyday life in the streets of South West London (not to mention a sub – 'Under-Milk-Wood' pastiche) I don’t think Earlsfield was ever like that. I do think, though, that the area has changed beyond recognition, over the years and particularly, In the last two years, Earlsfield, has burgeoned as a retail destination in the time we have known it and worked there in our shop, Sugarbag Blue. all we see are articles about the dying high street,. Mary Portas has been appointed to fly in help from above to a few chosen streets across the country to reverse the decline in retail from its apparent former glory and to patronise us into feeling its our fault as traders. Years ago, I am told,  the area used to have several bakeries, a cd shop, several pine furntiture shops; our premises was one of three butchers, and then a vegetable shop and many others – most of these have been made unusable by superstores and the web.

In our first week of being open, a man from the scrapyard came in like a king, inspecting his troops, regarded our gift-covered shelves,  laughed  out loud with derision and left wordlessly; there was one pensioner who  used to peer scornfully in through the door as if he were looking at the desecration of a church, and mutter - 
‘.. but do we need it?’

Do we? Indeed, nothing we sell will keep you alive, but having seen so many young families come through the area and make a life and raise their children on the streets between Earlsfield road and Burntwood lane, and needing community, needing re-assurance that they were still part of the bigger world, I really think we do need it. People need to celebrate their chidrens’ and families' important milestones; they need to adorn their homes to make them special, even though they may not be raising their family in the ideal conditions they would dream of as young couples, possibly in houses smaller than they grew up and far from their parents, they need to have cafes to meet and make precious local connections, and to be social creatures not just mothering machines; women are the force behind families as they adapt, fit-in, and evolve. in the case of the many local South-Africans they need to keep in touch with their roots.

 The internet has seen the fantastic flourishing of enterprising mums organisations, which create a community linked from peoples laptops, there is I have discovered recently, but there has to be a physical place to go as well –particularly when you have young children, or are a young couple, your local streets really are where you live, they are what you are stuck with for now which is why, despite the dominance of the supermarket behemoths, Earlsfield  now has a new deli,  a beauty parlour a childrens painting shop, a flowershop and flower stall; a South-African specialist shop, a bike shop, a computer café/menders,  at least three hairdressers, Carluccios, Belle Amis with its mum-friendly environment, three gastro-pubs, it’s a kids thing for junior work-outs,, a thriving multi-cultural theatre, and a cocktail bar - to name but a few. There  are  some classic survivors from days of old –the lawnmower mender, tattoo parlour, the church and their powerful cake sales, the picture-framers, the snookerhall, and bubble café,  we don’t need any of these in the sense that they will stop us from starving or dying of the cold, but I think they do make life liveable, between going to collect todays 3-for-2 bargains at Sainsburys.

  When, a few years ago, with the driving persistence of a local councillor who had been given a parking ticket while buying a card form us…. Some of the traders  got  the council  to allow free parking on one side of the road on Saturday afternoon, our tiny triumph seemed to signal that we were not just a dusty through- route on the way to the Arnedale, but a place in its own right. No, the parking victory was nice in that it felt like we might just have an identity, apart from the fact that the trains take you to central London in minutes, every three minutes. I recall, when we used to share a house with my brother up by the common, most people up the hill back then had never heard of Earlsfield or didn’t know where it was. Well,if you want to eat at Carluccios, I bet  you know where it is now.

I really mourn the loss of some absolute gems-does anyone remember the diy shop near the post-office that could find anything, absolutely anything and was always home to old geezers, chatting(and smoking, inside - shock, horror); the terrible loss of 'Wines of the World' which may have been hit by the supermarkets and their utter dominance of anything except Harrods; the ill-feted yoghurt shop; the life-style café with treatment rooms; the amazing secondhand bookshop gobbled-up by the station- (will we ever see their like again?) But the secret of revitalising of a community might not be in the hands of a government-appointed czar, but in the links between smalltime businesses, like  wagons joining in a circle to fend of  attackers’ arrows. The guy from the scrapyard came back about 5 years later and shouted over a queue of customers into our bustling shop
 ‘who’s laughin’ now, love?

I would love to hear any relevant stories about Earlsfield, or to post pictures of interest about our history.

.( Don’t get me started on parking – next, I would love suggestions as to a system to alert people when the dreaded 'blue meanies' are about – a system of whistles or Robinhood style catcalls - this is not because the government shouldn’t be able to empty our pockets to fund the bank bonuses, but because the signs along Garratt lane are downright deceptive – we’ve all known it for years down here. Anyway, more on that anon.)

 written by Jo.

Sugar Bag Blue : little bit about us!

Sugar Bag Blue is owned by Anna and Jo Dow and is situated in the high street of Earlsfield. Sugar Bag Blue has an amazing collection of unique and inspirational  jewellery, cards and stationary, toys and baby gifts. There's something for everyone in this quirky little shop.


Described by many as a treasure trove or simply as a delightful Aladin's cave waiting to be discovered, Sugar Bag Blue and Tickled Pink Gift Shops are a must see in the South West London area.

Jewellery, Children's Toys, Cards, Artistic Trinkets and interesting collectables from all around the world are waiting to be discovered by you ;-) We pride ourselves in stocking a wide selection of fairly traded items from all around the world.

Sugar Bag Blue sell cards for all occasions, gift bags, boxes and gift wrap, gifts for men, toiletries, lamps, fairy lights and photo frames. We also proudly believe in supporting our local community. Please pop in and come and visit us.