What Storage Staff Have For Lunch

Storage units. So interesting, no? So necessary, so expensive, so bloody cold. From the Goldsmiths student summer sofa storage in East London to the lunatic hugeness of Martinspeed, the creme de la creme of art world storage in North London. The latter situated just past the Old Vinyl Factory. The ceilings were as high as a London townhouse and then some. Just huge. Full of wooden boxes with all kinds of famous artists's names printed on the side in black. Jeez! I walked up and down the aisles quietly gasping. I tried to look cool for half a second but it didn't last. They were just boxes, but, you know, the art was seeping through. And what I couldn't see was obviously growing more amazing by the minute.

I then froze my socks off with my colleague Georgia as we photographed the works. On my phone, of course, very technical. I had called in advance so the handler could get everything ready for us. Our handler this day was great. It was so cold he took us to the staff room to warm up over lunch. The staff room was a huge office with 2 desks one end and a tennis court sized space with tiled grey carpet squares, and a table at the other end, full of burly guys having lunch. It all went a bit quiet as we sat down. I broke the sudden silence with 'Oh my god, look at your salad' followed by ' What are you eating...but you're a bloke'. I took the subtle approach. Two men had the most incredible salad, beetroot, chicken, peppers, loads of salad leaves, purple and all shades of green. Just gorgeous/beautiful. We got chatting. They gave us fresh Panettone. Everything was good. And delicious. And (very slightly) warmer.

We put each painting up against the grey felt low level stand and snapped away, crossing items off on our list at quite a speed. We didn't book the viewing room for cost reasons but actually, it worked really well. Georgia wore my wooly hat and jumped up and down to keep warm. I had multiple layers of thermals on which almost restricted my movement. But I did manage to lean a huge ladder up against some large containers on wheels (with the names of an elder male artist duo on, but empty I hasten to add) whilst I tried to get height to photograph some prints. Didn't work. Also not very Health and Safety. We'd do the prints properly on the next visit...