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The public face of Sugar-bag Blue paints a very flattering
image of me:
“Anna, the big strong character, the founder-Manager of a
lovely gift shop, single handedly steering a happy ship with style and good
humour! “
But the ‘Cinderella’ you’ll sometimes catch a glimpse of
carrying boxes, dealing with the rubbish, fending off parking attendants or
buried under piles of accounts and bookkeeping is actually the magician behind
the visual spell!
That’s my Jo - lover, partner, husband, father of my
children, best friend and messy pain in the arse fanatic about colour and
visual taste!
In our adventure together I give ‘content’ and Jo provides
the ‘context’ and thus we swim along happily together.
We met when we were very young – just 14 – both budding
actors attending the National Youth Theatre on summer courses.
Funny really –
we couldn’t have come more different backgrounds, Jo from a middleclass country
idyll in Worcestershire and me from a big Irish, catholic, no frills family in
Derry, and yet we connected immediately – first as friends and some years later
as partners.
We had twenty years of being actors ‘travelling this way
that way, backwards forwards over the Irish Sea .’
I mostly toured with theatre companies and Jo did loads of television and work
on screen. They were excting and magic years.
(Anna as the lady, Euphrosene with Tilda Swinton in 'Orlando.')
Towards the end of or
acting carreers I spent three years in Dunlaoghaire, Dublin ,
with the three boys, whilst Jo travelled to work in London on a Soap during the week and then
home to us at the weekends. This was a hard and challenging period for us as a
family, but also an unforgettably satisfying and intimate period of motherhood
for me with my three little chicks.
When I got offered a job at the National
theatre in 2001, I jumped at the chance, packed our bags and it was “wagons
roll”! That job finished up 9 months later and it roswas time to go back to Dublin , 'but we just hadn’t the heart to part again and so
we stayed and began our London
adventure. We stumbled on Earlsfield as an area to settle in – lucky or what?
(Anna with Patrick Malahide in Hinterland
at the National Theatre.)
When you have very young children you are very
present in the area you live. Lots of pushing the pram, pounding the pavements
with toddlers by the hand or on crazy scooters. You find yourself chatting to
all sorts of people you might never even meet if you didn’t have the children
and most of all, in your vulnerability, you are grateful for every encouraging
word and helping hand. I feel very priveliged to see all the beautiful babies,
children and brilliant young women, who are my customers, as they go about
their lives in Earlsfield and to watch the little ones as they grow up and head
off to school. I am amazed by the love and dedication that I see from all the
families in Earlsfield.
People often ask us if we miss the theatre and I really mean
it when I say “No”. The shop is a wonderful, continuous, creative workshop for
us. Its like being in a long running show really – perpetually interesting,
with new characters and stories passing through all the time.
The team at Sugarbag
Blue are lovely women – all creative, smart and talented. I call them the
SugarBabes! Over the years we’ve had dancers, actors, artists and bohemians of
all sorts. All these wonderful people bring their adventures and colourful
personalities to the shop and add dynamically to the mix.
Jo and I love the
challenge of searching for interesting and beautiful things to sell. I am
obsessed with costume jewellery and accessories We are both passionate about
creating environments were people can relax and enjoy themselves, because that’s
when things can really start to happen. I love soft furnishing with texture and
colour, eclectic pottery, wood, flowers, books all add warmth ease and depth to
a room. I am anti huge, white, expansive spaces that inhibit childrens’ messy
play and enslave women to thousands of hours of housework .
We’re just putting the finishing touches to the
Autumn/Winter shopping and feeling quite pleased and excited about showing it
to you in September. This year we pledged to come into the 21st
century and learn how to use Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. Actually we are
loving thse new channels of communcation and so excited about our new website
which will be ready for launch in September.
Thank you all for your kind support of Sugar-Bag Blue. We
don’t take it for granted one little bit. Everyday we open the door and we
leave it open in all weather! We are
never sure if anyone will come in but so far you always do.
Sugarbag bue is about affordable, produce with a story - a choice of gifts for friends family
or a treat for yourself, that has been offered with thought by us and discovered with care by the customer.
After RADA between
rehearsals of playing Josephine opposite James Bolam in 'Victory,' a play about
Napoleon at Chichester Anna got restless – so we made a line of jewellery
by hand without knowing anything about jewellery. When asked for hundreds more
by Liberties, we decided a fork in the path had been reached. Showbiz was
saying, 'its me or the sparkly things.' Not until we settled in Earlsfield
after 20 years of tv and touring did the idea come back and Earlsfield saw Sugarbag Blue born.
We decided when the oldest boy reached secondary that we
should find a place to settle –
The contrast for the one away filming and the one pushing
the pram at home was destructive –I remember phoning from a payphone in the
Bahamas where I shot a film about being the captain of a Navy frigate, and I
was bragging away about the location and
the freebies – it suddenly struck me Anna was
coping with stuff like electricity bills and two young babes.
So we stopped.
I think it just happened to be Earlsfield, near to where I
had filmed a lot, and there was a lot of greenery. Only later did we think that
the area had an awful lot going for it –we had seen a lot of places that found
their identity, Notting Hill, Archway in North London, Stoke Newington, Shoredirch where I went to
college when it was a dingy collection of defunct tailoring factories; all became too expensive to live in, but we seemed
to have found Earlsfield before it goes too mad, which it may yet.but here you
can feel that here is, dare I say it, a village feel plus the identity from the many south African people
who congregate round the bend in the round and regularily worship the
oblong ball.
Anyway, I love the city –the country idyll doesn’t hold water
for me –I know, I grew up there. I mean just listen to ‘the Archers’ – they are
all suing one another over stepping into the wrong orchard. Not like the city
–we give leeway for all sorts of things just to keep the peace. Londoners will hear a party next door and just live with it, stuff that would get you bludgeoned in Ambridge! In my village
alone we had a murderer, two armed robbers, a witch, a convicted sheep-shagger,
countless unconvicted tax dodgers, psychos of every hue, and absolutely
hundreds of bigots!
No, it’s the big smoke for me anyday – I still remember, as
a teenager, coming up to London for my first job as a waiter in Soho
–I used to love walking home though the early morning streets as the great city
awoke.
We moved house 36 times before setting up home in Earlsfield - I knew the area well having filmed 'the Bill' there for 4 years on the local streets, and also in the studios at South Wimbledon, soap-opera ‘Family Affairs’ as patriarch Jim
Webb –the Webb familly were a desperately hand to mouth lot, decent but
unlucky –everything bad you could imagine happened to us – I would literally
turn up to work everyday expecting to be shocked, punched, widowed, abused , humiliated and also
jubilant about a pregnancy, or distraught at a kidnapping all in the same day –I loved it and when time was
up, we strapped the piano to the roof of our volvo and drove off to spain – well,
we went round the corner and the series stopped. I used to loved it -
before that I had been so used to playing
professionals – doctors lawyers, soldiers, policemen -all the jobs of the guys I
went to school with – men struggling with their responsible trained position –‘Jim’
was just hanging in there – like me, actually.. And people have been really
nice about the programme –those who were sad enough to be watching!
The first item we stocked was a' bill brown' stripey beach bag
– the idea was to bring colour to our area- we
may not live at the centre of the world, but everone deserves colour. If
you can't aways get away to the beach, at least you can have the colours of the
summer at hand. And everyone should be able to afford colour, not just the posh
places! Also, both of us have brothers and sisters and love to mark family
rituals and celebrations, so we all cater for all important familly markers, from weddings to christenings – its hilarious, we have seen
it all. Guys just don’t get it about presents – take your wife’s advice over choosing things
like jewellery! I am ashamed actually to see how many
guys are hugely generous and careful in treating their partners –I am gradually
getting into hot water by comparison.
As an ambitious child, Anna had sold balloons
with faces painted on them to make the price of a Freddy Mercury ticket.
She discovered an eye for sparkles – and an amazing memory
for numbers, categories etc. she really is the fastest buyer you will ever meet
–we virtually run round trade fairs saying ‘..no,..no..yes..no.’
We have travelled far and wide to gather Sugarbag Blue’s
stock –a big giftware company paid Anna to
go to the far east put together their jewellery collection, and she has never looked
back –I came along for the ride, swanning round in a cream suit like Graham Greene.
I particularly liked the Hong Kong museum
– wow, the things we British did for tea! And opium!
Our search has taken us to Paris -(we were disappointed at the obsession in
French culture with faux-native art of Africa, and the fact that all the
fabrics smelled of fag smoke) but at the last minute we found some beautiful enamel costume jewellery there, and after an
agreed rendezvous in a Paris backstreet (very ‘Maigret’) because we couldn’t
wait we literally carried it back in our rucksacks – we were sweating at customs
because it was so heavy. We must have looked really dodgy.
Also, we have had a thrilling foray into french fashion for a
couple of years – we may come back to it. But fashion can be ferociously
competitive –the deals on clothing in the big stores now can leave you
standing.
People are becoming more interested in the provenance of their
purchases, and we mean to pursue this topic –our coming website will have a ‘meet the maker ‘ section –whether it is
some feedback from South Africa where some of the jeweller comes from)or Brazil
where a lot of silver comes from, or an interview with a British card maker
fresh out of art-college.
(Lovely Manu, Source of Much that is Good!!)
We wil take a look at the lives of those who supply
us, and maybe set up a dialogue with them. It may be there is a chance to help
in the lives of those places –there is a successful indian shoemaker who made a
donation for each and every pair of shoes he sold in the west –and his
customers really responded.
We are every excited about the opportunities that social
media and the web are opening up –the best retail tells a story whether that is
on the high street, or on web-platform. The best web designers are people
from theatre as they understand the idea of abstract narrative, being led by a progression of events and
emotions to your quarry!!
Lots of love from SugarBag Blue xxx
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