Diaries, Etchings and a Mad Dash to Balham

Detail from a wood block,
coloured by the inks of the print.



When I cleared out all dad's stuff from mum's enormous but ramshackle house I left dad's diaries. I didn't want them, they weren't mine and I wanted no one else reading them either. This is before blogging and selfies where people can edit them selves as they choose and present themselves to the world. I'd had to open them previously to see what they were as the diaries, sketchbooks, logs of customer addresses, teaching notes etc all had similar exteriors. I absolutely hated having my dad's diaries. Within seconds of opening a book I could tell if it was a diary or not. It actually made me feel slightly nauseous, repulsed even. I'd thought about burning the diaries. Dr Wurtenberger, one of the most knowledgable experts on estate management (she runs Arp's estate) said that often grandchildren were a better choice than children in estate management as they were too close to the parent. This wasn't definitive but I get her point only too well. I told Bill, one of dad's closest friends,of my diary burning idea and he said 'Nooooooo, think of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath!' (He famously burnt some of her diaries after her death and just before he died)

So, left in my mother's house were dad's diaries plus all his etching plates and carved woodblocks. These were exquisite but soooo heavy it was ridiculous. What happened is, my mother had a short stay in hospital and the council decided it was going to do a 'deep clean' (their words) on her house the next day, outsourcing it to a private company. The last thing I wanted was for them to 'clean' away lots of tatty cardboard boxes full of etching plates, lumps of old wood and diaries so I called dad's great friend Bill who lives up the road. We swooped in early the next morning, grabbed the boxes and legged it. In a car. My god, have you ever picked up a stack of etching plates?! Bill had a bad back so watched as I loaded the car. Am thinking now that was a bad idea back-wise but it seemed a good one at the time. We took them to the storage unit and wiped the sweat off our brows.