In the summer of 2010 I came back from Herrick 11, a particularly hard tour with 3 RIFLES in Afghanistan, 44 years old and not a bloody clue as what I was going to do for a living. I had a few months possible work part-time lined up at university over the winter, and I suppose I could have gone back cap in hand to my old clients, but deep down I knew I couldn’t do that. And then of course there were the websites I’d set up before I’d gone on tour. The dating sites in particular were growing rather nicely and starting to provide a healthy little income each month, which along with the TA and university income were enough I suppose to keep the wolf from the door. But something was wrong with me and although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it I knew for certain that I could never see a long-term future in the TA, lecturing at university or making money online from dating websites. After a few weeks it dawned on me that the one talent that I’d run away from all my life now had to be confronted, I had to pursue my art.
I’m not really sure when the talent surfaced, but it’s always been there, from the first moment my grandfather gave me a lump of Plastercine as a small toddler, all through infants, painting, modeling, drawing, even Lego, you name it I some how proved a natural. By the time I was at middle school I’d won a few competitions and secured a place at the local art college during the summer holidays. The trouble started I suppose at senior school, by now as well as art I studied technical drawing and design technology, and same old story, I found easy that which others struggled with. And it didn’t end there, by now we were studying drama, and guess what, yep I found that I had a raw talent for that as well. My grandparents were being assaulted on all sides by teachers desperate to push me on to art college, or drama college say, the problem was that I was angering them all by the simple fact that not only was I not interested, but I was also set on pursuing a commission in the army.
Yes I know that came out of left field, but hang on in there as it gets worse. Not only was I turning down every helping hand, but also to make matters worse I, in my pursuit of Sandhurst, was trying to achieve the impossible, why? Well as a real basic requirement I needed ‘O’ level English, Math’s and a science, all OK unless you’re like me and have a chronic case of dyslexia, bad with numbers and down right bloody awful with words! It took 3 attempts to pass English and Math’s, finally scraping a ‘C’ in my second year at 6th form college. College if anything was worse than school, people either got angry because I was just not interested in pursuing my art, or treated me like a simpleton because I couldn’t read or write properly. In fact I left early through my 3rd year there because of just that. In those days there were no allowances for dyslexia as there are now, and the worst case of it was my ‘A’ level Design & Technology course, straight A’s in the practical and the design side, but I end up with a ‘D’ because of the spelling. All made worse because the dickhead of a teacher’s attitude was that my ‘sort’ really shouldn’t be at college at all, better off on the shop floor don’t you know!
So off I troop to the Army, at the time I was already in the TA at college, 10 PARA as was in Aldershot, and with their support I passed the entry tests for Sandhurst, well with the provision that I attend a 6 month course at the Army education center in Beaconsfield to improve my English first. Well if I haven’t bored you to death yet and you’re still reading you know what’s coming next. I of course failed, right near the end at Sandhurst, and yes it was the English. Out of the gates I drove, bitter, sad and yet determined to succeed and prove them all wrong.
Next a couple of blurred years really, a while unemployed, then running around in a bright yellow Landrover, buying at boot sales and selling at markets, ending up in London working for Murdoch, and watching Gag die.
When I first left Sandhurst I was full of confidence, until I started to apply for jobs. Usual story you’ll hear from a million others my age looking for work in the early 80’s. Most companies never got back to you, those who did had three stock answers, you’re over qualified, you’re under qualified or you don’t have enough experience. And so began a frustrating and depressing period of my life, the daily grind of looking for work brings you down and down, you start caring less and getting up later, after about 3 months you’re pretty much sleeping all day and awake all night. Eventually I’d had enough and so borrowed a little cash to set up a market stool selling watch batteries and other likewise useless objects, Sundays you’d find me at boot sales buying and selling, all the time plodding around in an asthmatic old yellow Landrover.
Along the way I bumped into an old college teacher of mine, Pete, who asked if I was still doing any artwork these days, “well not really, just a little sculpture in plasticine”, “great, why not pop into the college with it?” says he. And so I took in a car sculpture I was working on, he took a couple of photos, we had a natter over a cup of tea and I didn’t think anymore of it. That is until a week or so later when I had the local paper around to do a piece on me, and then daytime TV asked for an interview. I had nothing better to do, was flattered and so obliged both. As always I became embarrassed with not so much the attention, but rather the praise both heaped on what was to me a simple sculpture that had been completed over a couple of nights to elevate boredom. Well a little later Pete told me that a rather well known animation company in London wanted to chat with me, and so with packed lunch from Nan, some sculptures in old shoeboxes and wearing my only suit acquired from Oxfam I excitedly caught the train to Waterloo.
As it happened the ‘chat’ with them went rather better than expected and I caught the train back to Southampton with a firm job offer in my pocket, they were willing to offer me a juniors position on £43 a week. All great until I started to look for accommodation near their studios, the best I could find was going to cost £37 a week, the math’s just didn’t add up and so with real regret I had to turn the job down. Now as a much wiser and older man I look back and realize I should have just taken the job and found work in a bar or restaurant washing dishes to make up the extra cash needed, but as we all know it’s never done anyone any good wishing that they could back in life. But this funny enough is not the real lesson I learned from the episode, no it was that there are some really amazing people out there who will always put others before themselves. Pete was a fantastic teacher who went out of his way to help a former student, how many people do you know who would do that?
During this year Gag developed throat cancer, and over the next 12 months slowly wasted away in front of my eyes before finally dying in hospital with Nan at his side. I was just 20. All through my life he’d been their for me, through him I gained passions that have lasted to this day, a love of woodwork, animals, nature, and so much more, but the real gift he gave me was his last and most poignant lesson. Near the end I went to see him for once without the rest of the family, Nan was there as usual but taking a break in the canteen, this was just before they started to really pile on the pain killers and so although he was in great pain he was lucid and pleased to see me. Looking down on him, this once giant of a man, I was again heartbroken at the way in which he had wasted away, just a small rag doll now in pajamas five sizes too big, tubes from his nose and a drip to his arm. All that remained of Gag were his eyes, still bright and alert. A few months earlier they had removed his voice box in a desperate attempt to stem the advance of the cancer, but it didn’t stop us communicating, his eyes smiled and his nearest hand gave me the thumbs up. In hospital he spoke to us by writing on a small pad by his side and for while we made small talk until Nan returned. Just as I went to stand and let Nan have the chair he gently touched my arm, on turning back I looked at his pad, he’d wrote “should have gone to sea”. By now Nan was fussing around him and so I left, a few days later he died and I never got to ask him what it meant, but later after the funeral I asked Nan if she knew, she smiled and told me that when Gag came back from the war he went back to work in Howards lumber yard, where he worked for the rest of his life, but his time in the navy had given him a love for the sea and small boats, if he’d had his way he’d have loved to work on a fishing trawler. Amazed I asked why he’d never done it and why he’d never spoke to me about it before, Nan tried to explain that he’d come back from the war to a young wife and new baby, my Mother, and so just felt he’d have to stick with Howards rather than chase dreams. Puzzled I left it there for a few months till a time when Nan and I were chatting about the holidays the three of us had had over the years, how where ever we went we’d loose him for a few hours and always find him on some quay chatting away to the local fishermen, and then it struck me,
“Nan, he was telling me to not end my days with any regrets, wasn’t he?”
Smiling she walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on and over her shoulder she said,
“knew you’d get there in the end.”
A little after that I bumped into an old fried from college who was telling me about the great job’s going in London working for Murdoch on the Times and Sun, I tried to phone the number she gave me but got no where with the receptionist, dejected I just put it down to yet another failure. Nan though wasn’t the sort to take no for an answer, nor the sort to let anything get in her way. She takes the number from me, and reaches for the phone,
“Hello, my grandson has an interview with you tomorrow could I just check the time please?”
“Certainly, what name please?”
“Meheux, Brent Meheux”
“Oh, I am sorry I can’t seem to find his name on the list here?”
“Well he must be there, we’ve the letter here from, now how do you pronounce that…”
“Mr Smith?”
“Yes that’s it!”
“I am sorry about this, look I can squeeze him in at say 12.15?”
And so I learned another important lesson in life, never mess with, nor underestimate the cunning of little old ladies. And so I started my career in the newspaper game, where I’d stay for the next 14 years.
I blame NEXT, films like ‘Wall Street’ and the bloody TV, all of a sudden you wore a suit out, even if you didn’t at work, drank half’s at wine bars, tried to convince everyone your job somehow had links to the city, or advertising and generally acted like a prat. And boy did I buy into it, along with Sue, my new wife. Our friends all worked in advertising, or the city, some were even property developers, and a great many sounded really cool as they introduced themselves as ‘entrepreneurs’, what ever that was. We bought a 3 storied house in the heart of Southampton, surrounded by bars and restaurants, ate out every week and generally maxed out every form of credit we could get. I worked part-time in an advertising agency, for free I might add, and even Sue left her old job and started a career in media, OK it was telesales for the local paper, but ‘media’ sounded more hip. Me, well graphic design suddenly sounded cool and so on top of a full time job working nights in London and a non paid part-time job in a local advertising agency in Southampton I decided to start a degree part-time at art college. I at that time had moved into imaging on the Times, re-touching pictures for the paper and working on the picture desk of the Times part-time, yes that’s another part-time job, how else do you imagine the credit cards got paid.
This to me was the beginning of ‘Band snobbery’ creeping up on us all, all of a sudden it was about the brands you wore, drove or used, regardless of the cost. Suddenly people started to see brands everywhere that they just had to have, you hadn’t arrived unless you had a BMW, a Rolex watch, or a Barbour jacket. If you bought shoes you’d spend hours convincing everyone, including yourself, that they had to be a pair of Barker’s from R & B. “Well they’ll last for years wont they, £150 a bargain, open a store card, don’t mind if I do.” You worked to pay the credit card bills and lived to go out at the weekend, preened and posing in your latest purchases. Sue and I lived in the heart of Southampton a two-minute stroll from Bedford place and all it’s wine bars, independent shops, bistro restaurants and cafes spilling on to the street. Restaurant wise it was always Italian, or ‘Buffalo Bill’s’, an up market American diner run by yet another Italian couple, it’s often been said that regardless of which restaurant you choose in Southampton you’ll get the same Italian family runningit.
My part-time work at the advertising agency would often end abruptly around lunch time, off we, Miles and I, would troop to the ‘Avenue’ for a liquid lunch only to some how never make it back into the office The Avenue was one of those bars that today people would call ‘shabby sheik’, bare wooden floors, peeling posters and old school furniture for tables and chairs, by 2.00pm the place would be packed regardless of the day, wall to wall suits and padded shoulder pads, the air thick with the fug of Marlboro’s, or Camel’s, everyone animated, the noise drowning out ‘Madonna’ on the juke box. In all the years I drank there I don’t think I ever managed to grab a seat, if you were lucky you found a spot by the Victorian fire place and perched your bottle of Sole on the mantle piece, ducked every time an ice bucket of wine came past at head height, soaked up the atmosphere and tried to look as though you belonged. Miles and I would drop Sue a call on his ‘brick’ of a mobile phone and she could always be relied upon to join in the fun at the end of her day, meeting up in ‘Simons’ one of Southampton’s better known wine bars, run by a former second hand car dealer called, well ‘Simon’. Just about anyone who was, or thought they were, anyone could be found in Simon’s.
You couldn’t call yourself a yuppie unless you were somehow closing the latest deal of the century, in confidential talks with the competition about a merger or being head hunted, and to this end Miles could be trusted to always play the part, especially after the beer had taken hold. Great plans would unfold, hushed whispers in quiet corners, well after a few beers maybe not quite so hushed. Miles alluding to the great clients we were on the cusp of bringing into the agency, or trying to convince anyone who would listen of the virtues of signing up his creative team, all 2 of us, well 1.5 really what with me being part-time and still unpaid. All would be forgotten in the morning of course, other than that nagging slightly muddled memory of me shouting out, “have credit card will eat!” as we staggered through the door of Buffalo Bill’s late the night before.
Days not at work would be spent using my mountain bike to ride the short distance to the public library in Southampton’s civic center, dressed in standard yuppie off duty wear, 501’s, penny loafers, Barbour jacket and Filofax under arm, which brings me to another point about the stupidity of yuppies being hooked up on brands. The way we all wore these wax jackets as though we were trying to fool everyone that our exciting weekends were spent in the country, trust me no one was fooled. And ‘mountain bikes’ were the latest must have sporting accessory, the nearest mine got to a mountain was the odd pothole in Bedford place.
“Well they’ll last for years wont they, £150 a bargain, open a store card, don’t mind if I do.”
Everything comes to an end at sometime though, and the death of the yuppie was no different. I suppose you could trace it back to when ‘Lawson’, the fat useless twat that he was thought it would be a jolly good idea to put interest rates up, and up, and up, by the time they hit 15% the whole housing market crashed, suddenly the house you’d bought at the top of the market was now worth way below the mortgage, businesses started to go under everywhere, I walked into the agency one afternoon only to see the receptionist in floods of tears, Miles grabbing me on his way out. Us drinking to the demise of the agency in the Avenue, we bought a bottle of cheap fizzy wine, asking for an ice bucket, to look the part and pondered the great break this would be as we could now start up our own agency, “Eh what with” I ask, “the redundancy money of course!” states Miles, “I haven’t got any coming, in fact I’ve never been paid” replies I. Later I’d heard that Miles had had to take a junior designers job back at his old company, I like to think that he got his own agency in the end.
It’s over 20 years since the great days of Bedford Place, Simon’s and the Avenue have long gone, along with all the independent shops and most of the restaurants, all that remains are discount theme pubs offering tasteless, but cheap food, full of drunks during the day and students in fancy dress in the evening. All the houses are now packed to the rafters with students, unloved, and as shabby as their new occupants. Sometimes when I’m in Southampton I take a wonder down memory lane and grab a coffee in one of the many coffee shops that have sprung up there, feeling as ever somehow mugged by the whole episode, sad at how I could have been so naive as to have wanted to be part of such an arrogant clique. As I look around I see that outside of the drunks and students the only other people left in the area are those who didn’t have the funds, or means, to leave with the rest of the rats, and I smile as I realize the place is probably all the better for their departure.
Bankruptcy was the biggest wake up call of my life, not at first no, but now 5 years later I realize it was. The turn of the millennium coincided with another change in my life, by now I was living in Devon, new wife two great step-children, 2 horses, 2 dogs, 3 cats and a whole tribe of gerbils, work had also changed. After 14 great years on the Times I’d finally had the guts to jump ship and start my own agency, Cre8. I was still lecturing in Southampton a day a week, but the rest of the time would be spent trying to build a company. Endless shows and meetings trying to get it off the ground, basically running around like a ‘yuppie puppy’ on steroids.
Trying to explain to someone who has always had, and always will have a full time job what it is really like to build a business, big or small, is impossible. When you take the path of the self employed your doomed to a life of hard work, intolerable levels of stress and never ending hours in the office. My story is in no way different to 1000’s of others up and down the country, working 7 days a week, 16,17 hour days, borrowing every penny you can find just to keep going. By the time we entered 2007 I had 15 staff, fancy offices on Exeter quay, horrific debts and was 100% sure it wasn’t going to last. And sure enough it didn’t, a little into that year we were bankrupt.
So I then got the wake up call and saw the light right, eh, well no, no I didn’t at all. As with many others who’ve been through it I started all over again, kept the best of the clients, a couple of staff part-time and pushed for world domination again, “full speed ahead and dam the torpedoes!” But something was wrong, at first I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, an itch I couldn’t scratch. So not being able quite to pin it down I just carried on, looking after my clients as best I could, bending over backwards to please them, until one day I did something really odd, I told a client he would be better looked after by another agency, that same evening I tried to explain to my wife why.
“You see it’s like this…”
“You’re fed up being treated like his staff”
she cuts in
“Well yes, but…”
“And your hearts not in it anymore”
“Oh…”
There really was no getting away from it she was right, yes it paid the bills, but I really had had enough of clients full stop. She carries on slopping the dog food out for the boys, they all tails and tongues around her feet
“By the way I noticed on the MOD website today that they’ve put the age up to 42 for joining the TA…”
quietly says I to the back of her head.
“It would mean going to Afghanistan wont it, I understand Brent, you need to get it out of your system, don’t you?”
She tells the kitchen window
“Well you see…how the hell did you work that one out!” “Simple I’m your wife”
she replies, insert here the picture of her just carrying on with feeding the dog’s, slight knowing smile creeping across her face, you know the sort, all wife’s seem to have at times such as this, and me doing a goldfish impression, mouth moving, but no sounds uttering, again common for all husbands.
And so at 42 I joined the TA, 6 RIFLES in Exeter, and 18 months later gave up my business, and its clients forever the week I left for my tour to Afghanistan.
After a while I start to put my mind to earning a living, I’d been back about a month and was starting to get bored just walking round the house, or sitting in coffee shops whilst Barbara was busy in the salon. So I begin to look at the dating and affiliate websites I set up before I went away, it hit’s me that this way I didn’t have to have any clients, I could live on a desert island and still earn a living, but there was a problem, no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t seem to work from home, every time I tried to get on I kept finding job’s to do around the house, the shopping, the cooking the, well you get the idea. So I talk it over with Barbara, and we look at me finding a small office,
“OK love, but I think you’ll need a new drawing board as well, are there any on Ebay?”
Confused I look back at her
“It’ll give you something to do when you’re bored with codding websites, wont it?”
So still slightly confused I begin looking for an office, oh, and a drawing board.
I find a small office in Topsham above a small cluttered shop selling kitchen wares and all manner of trinkets for the house proud, run by a slightly mad, but lovely, old lady. Pretty soon new mac, drawing board and I are settled in, along with a ton of art materials that Barbara’s found around the house, cheap art chest from Ikea, now stuffed with odd work of mine from the last twenty years. And so I throw myself into SEO, search engine optimization, trying to get my sites onto page one of Google, a black and highly frustrating art. All over the world there are millions of people likewise trying to fathom out just what makes Google tick in order to somehow make a living out of the web. What follows are endless hours of reading every article I can find, joining every forum, all mostly to no avail. You then experiment based on all the latest ideas, and old tricks that use to work, small gains are made here and there, but the vast majority of what you do just sits in cyber space unfound and unloved. Slowly over time the hits go up and the income comes in, from time to time Google decides to do the ‘dance’ and you see your sites overnight drop twenty pages, “sod it” back to square one. As I say it’s frustrating, and to be perfectly honest down right boring.
Within a week or so I take a break and find myself looking through some of my old work, I find a old half finished pen and ink, I start doodling, the next thing I know 3 hours have just flown by, “dam it,” I head back to the computer. The next morning I come in, turn on the computer and stare at a blank screen for ages, “bollocks! I’ll just finish off the drawing, wont take long”, the next thing I notice is that’s gone five. And so it continues, over the next week or so I find myself spending whole days at the drawing board and an hour or so at most at the computer. Before I know it I’m walking the streets of Topsham camera in hand, sketchbook in bag. Topsham is without a doubt one of the prettiest villages in Devon, just out side Exeter on the river Exe, boats of all sizes sway at anchor, rustic inns sit on the quay and unusual shops and galleries crowd it’s tiny single lane high street. Armed with reference photos and sketches I start to spend hours at the board working on pen and inks, the computer is used for colouring and little if any coding is done. One of the most frustrating things about the web is that once you’ve done as much as you can it really is just a case of waiting, sometimes for months, to see what effect your work has, and so I could feel slightly less guilty than you’d think.
After a couple of months Anne, the owner of the shop below, poked her head around the door with some miss- delivered mail, “Christ” she gasps and I spin round wondering what the hell I’ve done wrong. She walks into the center of the small office and slowly looks around, my eyes follow her, the walls are literary covered in photos and sketches, there’s hardly a square inch left uncovered. She stops by my board and seems engrossed in a technical flat I’m working on of a local building; from reference photos I’ve dramatically altered the perspective, heavily fore-shorting the lines.
“Why have you done this?”
“I was just bored doing coding all day, and…”
“No you stupid boy! WHY have you drawn it this way?”
“OH I…”
for the next half an hour or so we chat about my work, the direction I’m moving in etc. She looks at a couple of the photos on the wall, a couple I took in Afghanistan.
“Did you take these, I vaguely remember seeing that one on the front page of the Independent?”
“Yes, and that one there was used in I think 3 other papers, this one in the Times, mind you the picture credit on all is MOD, I took them whilst on tour so don’t even get a credit!”
“Darling YOU know you took them, that’s the important thing; and there are loads of wealthy people around here who’d pay a fortune for an illustration like this of their house”
I look down at the drawing she’s engrossed with shaking my head I try to explain that the one thing I have decided is to never work for clients again, their, well difficult.
“My dear what you mean is that clients are PRICKS, and I for one couldn’t agree more. No your quite right clients and commissions are the death of any real talent, but so is a lack of stimulation, don’t you think? No a real artist travels and lives their art, take Hemmingway, would his art have been as impressive had he not lived the life he did, or traveled as extensively?”
“Wasn’t he a writer, I didn’t know he…”
“Of course he was a writer you stupid boy, anyway I need a fag”
As she turns and disappears through the door, grey locks piled impossibly high, I’m left with the nagging thought that yet again I’ve been foolish enough to underestimate another little old lady.
A few weeks later I began teaching at university in Southampton again, as I have done over the winter for that last 14 years. Only this year they’d pushed up my hours and instead of a day or two it was going to be 4 days a week from October through to the end of April. And so reluctantly I gave up my office in Topsham and threw myself into the daily commute from Devon. But I’m not that depressed about it as it’s time to move on, to travel. The money from the university means I’ll not have to work all summer, for the first time in my life I’m going to work full time as an artist. I plan to travel as much as possible; adventures are planned in my old 1957 MGA, ‘glamping’ with Barbara and a stay in the old city of Malaga. The camera and sketchbook travel everywhere with me, and the search is on for my next studio. I am indeed ready for the journey; I wonder what the destination will be?
