Killer Queens

An adult retelling of Boudicca’s famed slaughter.





“In build she was tall, in her demeanour she was terrifying, in the glint of her eye most fierce and her voice was hoarse; a great mound of the tawniest hair fell to her hips.”
Cassius Dio, Roman history Book 62

Astonishing really, how a single woman could stand the test of time. No other Briton is remembered in quite the same way from the Bronze Age. Nor was any one person so utterly vilified by an enemy. In AD60, a red-headed “warrior queen” set out on a hate-trail of retribution so awful, she went down in history as the most divine deviant our country has ever known (perhaps with the exception of Ms Thatcher), but why is it that throughout history strong women have been begrudged so much? I suppose I ought to start at the beginning...

Bronze Age Britain was hardly a country of cohesion, we didn’t have a unifying king (or queen) of England yet and tiffs between sparring tribes was a regular occurrence. Even when the Romans invaded in AD43, we hadn’t learnt our lesson. The invading troops themselves were a typical misogynistic, dark-haired, olive-skinned bunch, in their eyes we were all inbred, tawny-haired, pale-skinned animals made worse by the fact we allowed our women to be queens and rule over land and people. To any Roman man, this was considered the ultimate disgrace. It was also for this reason that Queen Boudicca and her two virgin daughters were publically beaten and raped- for pride. The ‘calamitous’ political farce involving sexually voracious Cleopatra, their own Emperor Caesar and war hero Marc Antony some thirty years earlier was still fresh in their minds- they knew how dangerous a woman could be; to be queen was one thing, but warrior, another. And Boudicca was on another level. Fearsome with her foreign head of bright red hair, bellowing commands astride a chariot she no doubt inspired fear into the heart of thousands of well-trained soldiers simply because she was unprecedented to them. She represented the giver of life and the taker away all in one instance.

Nothing has changed. Boudicca’s spirit lives on in a number of all too visible, independent and opinionated women: Hilary Clinton, Coco Chanel, Jordan; all have been chastised for being too much of the three male-designated qualities above and according to feminist author, Naomi Segal, Director of the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies at UCL, it will never change. “The problem is that women can't be ghettoised. Whereas as whites we can feel a generalised guilt about white oppression of black people, men find it unbearable to feel that their partner, mother or daughter is criticising them for women's disadvantages, even if these disadvantages are undeniable. For women it's a problem, of course, that they can't simply stop loving or being sympathetic to men as, even if they're not heterosexual, they'll have fathers, brothers & sons. Women may feel angry about this but they often have a longstanding (not innate but well-taught) impulse to console men for their own fear-based aggression... Or women don't suffer from that scruple at all, but they are disempowered anyway, and disappear from the public arena for being disobedient in that respect.”

It was recently reported that there is an unconscious psychology for this; mothers apparently referred to their naughty sons as ‘cheeky’ whilst their daughters were deemed ‘stroppy’ for the same behaviour. A massive 88 percent of parents admitted to treating their sons and daughters differently; with boys getting away with it. The boundaries for girls are much more narrow and the consequences for misbehaviour more severe. Girls are witches, cunts, bitches, sluts, gash: a whole host of derogatory pseudonyms.

I feel it necessary to point out that not too long before Boudicca’s uprising, where she lead over half a million men into battle, there was another antihero of the Roman invasion, his name was Caratacus. His own guerrilla warfare had proven fruitless; he was captured and sent as a POW to Rome to stand trial. Amazingly, he was pardoned, given citizenship and welcomed as a hero. The fate for his female counterpart was not quite so magnanimous- she was either murdered or killed herself on the Primrose Hill battlefield, where the final showdown took place. This was only ever the end that would have afforded her it would seem. Continues Segal, “‘Loud’ and 'opinionated' are terms easily used about women who say things that those in power- mainly men, of course- still don't want to hear. It was 'strident' in the early 70s, or 'scold' or 'nag' from ancient times to the present. Women can have their faults like anybody, of course, but aggression based on insecurity is a male thing, and the technique of pomposity used to humiliate and silence the other is also male. It's only men who treat women with psychological or physical violence, excluding them & passing off a women's knowledge as 'loudness'.”

Even though we are permanently reminded of how to behave as women on a daily basis, via rigorous beauty regimes, primed and silenced Hollywood actresses and cross-legged subdued female television presenters, just remember that before our Pankhursts, our Greers and Elizabeth Wurtzels, we had a red-head. And she was loud!


Feature for -ology magazine, Histori-ology section, March 2011

Confessions of a Tag-A-Long

The evening at which I painfully realised that fashion was actually not my cut of the cloth, by Lauren De’Ath.

What people need to firstly understand is that I like clothes; aesthetically and visually they give me great pleasure: the drape of an expensive silk; the lustre of a piled velvet. Je les adore! Fashion on the other hand is an entirely other box of tricks- I find the whole mutable industry hysterical. I worked at a Fashion Week once- hysterical; I interned at Vogue- hysterical! But I kept asking myself: what was next rung of adventure on my sartorial ladder?

The answer came at about 4pm on a Tuesday afternoon over free drinks at The Hoxton Pony, a friend who had worked for Jonathon Saunders for all tally of a week and claim to Saunders fame was having sewn a single button to his Spring/Summer collection, had managed to accrue two tickets to the after show party. With London Fashion Week already fast disappearing into the retrospect of 2009 I jumped at the chance to schmooze with the proverbial cream cakes of the fashion world. (And, of course, be mildly amused by the whole thing).

NW1 didn’t stand a chance, I thought; wearing ripped tights (no fashion statement intended) and an ill-fitting ruchéd velvet dress I descended, the ever sceptical scenster, into the London underground for Marylebone. The Osnaburgh Terrace, a grand white pillared building, was Saunders’ statuesque venue de choix and hosts Relative PR had gone to great lengths (and heights) to ensure the walls, flagstone stairwell and several ominous, random glass counters were sufficiently adorned with white orchids and flickering candles- the whole thing was highly atmospheric. Waitresses floated about with trays of attractive, and more significantly free, cocktails and flitted past very occasionally with small but delectable dishes of food; refined versions of British classics from what I could tell, mini roast beef with bird egg-sized potatoes and so on.

Wallowing in glorious pretension I turned to see Jodie Harsh and her giant blonde weave enter the room only to then sashay away, hair towering over all else. Whilst my friend was talking Saunders with her fellow interns I retired to the sidelines to people watch, a far more satisfying activity than attempting to engage in chit-chat; something I am self-confessedly crap at. O, there’s Lulu Kennedy in white PVC! Clever. Ah, and there’s performance artist Theo Adams, aka The-O... I prefer him in drag. O and there’s Roksanda Ilincic and Richard Nicoll, how I love them! I was forced abruptly back down the earth soon after,however- someone was trying to make conversation. Damn. So, what did I do? I wrote. Did I work for Jon? O no, I’m a social leech, I’m with Lucy. Did I see the show? No, unfortunately, I was getting drunk in Shoreditch courtesy of a darling French barman. Several painful moments later, said raconteur with clumpy mascara was sufficiently full to vomitation from my verbal diarrhoea and sort of wandered away, perplexed. I am hideously awkward sometimes.

My next call of duty was to investigate the dance floor. The DJs from Ponystep were playing and apparently this is impressive in these circles... Everyone under the age of 25 and with a social life knows better, me thinks. Outside of their usual clique, however, the boys were spinning at their very best and on a dance floor filled predominantly with interns, we all danced to painfully cool electro dub-step, Lady GaGa and I’m quite sure, if my then Martini-soaked memory will allow; Britney Spears (can you have set without Britney, bitch, these days)? Thankfully not. We partied into the night, shoes were removed, drinks downed, shapes were thrown; but no-one fell and no-one was secretly sick in the corner because Fashion is pristine. The only controversy, mild as it was, was Vogue’s Fashion Editor, Harriet Quick, smoking on the dancefloor. Yes, that’s smoking indoors.

We rested off our foot-ache on leather sofas, next to a fabulously elegant set of drag queens in 1940s garb. A photographer darted about like a crack of tiny thunder, immortalsing the young, old, beautiful and remarkable things of fashion; and we just sat and watched it happen. Apparently Victoria Beckham designed all of her own collection; is really involved in the process; knows her dart from her seam and all that; better than that Moss for Topshop. The barman put petals and a spritz of perfume in the drinks. The Ladies were full of men. Are gladiator sandals really in fashion? Strangely, there was a little girl running around...

With a smoking area full of trannies; a dancefloor full of smokers and a liver full of, what was maybe gin, by midnight I was desperate for a change of scenery. Procuring two more free alcoholic gems from the bar I suddenly decided I didn’t want to drink anymore; poured my drink out the window, leaned out as far as I could to see where it had landed (hopefully not on Harsh’s expensive fake hair) and then returned to dissuade my friend from indoor-smoking à la The Quick with a stern, “You are not Jonathon Saunders and you do not work for Vogue!” All around us the room was clearing as the final chords of Joy Division faded into the night, the lights were turned on and the party, it seemed, was over. Out on the street it was back to reality, back to KFC and back to the N15 bus home and with my heels stowed safely away in my bag for my “reality” flats, I returned home to lie on my floor and muse over my first ‘fashion party’.

And what of the moral of the story, dear reader? Well, alcohol is not the answer, that’s for sure.

-Pegasus magazine, 2009-

I.am.Robot

It would seem the virtual is frazzling our wires in reality. Lauren De’Ath asks could myths about a Cyborg Nation really be true?

Questioning the detriments of technology in mainstream modern society is nothing new; after all it seems fairly Orwellian and is something of which Daily Mail ethics consistently remind. Sociability is apparently down and kids have been out taking murderous inspiration from video games and slasher movies for years we read; nothing new there. However, new investigative science is now asking just how safe is a society that breeds walking digital sponges?

It was the stuff of science fiction. Straight from the pages of Orwell; from the delirious mind of Russell T. Davies or pure Matrix reloaded. But now we have proof: tech culture is killing our brains. For years, as we sat transfixed before the television, we had our mothers whimpering beside us prophesying some ridiculous ailment called ‘square eyes’. Pfft, what of it? CITV was on, mum. Then later, we were chastised for an overzealous mobile phone usage; Chinese kids had forgotten how to use their forefingers in an age of texting thumbs and radio waves were carrying cancer straight to our brains. But- but, my I-phone?! And so life continues.

We are exposed to over 3000 commercial messages a day via various media outlets (Bluetooth, spam email, Internet pop-ups) and now new science is calling a truce to our somewhat overwhelming contact, claiming our brains are reaching critical mass. Funny, how our mothers always know best. For although we can now access information better than ever before, more importantly now that information can access us.

Years later CITV is no more, yet poised as we are on the threshold of tumultuous socio-cultural changes, Stanford science historian Professor Robert Proctor has come up with an ingenious new phrase to summarise society’s big problem. He calls it ‘agnotology- the study of culturally constructed ignorance’. His theory for human “down-culture” is simple apathy- we just don’t care. And, nor is it, he says, necessarily a bad thing. Rather, it is an instinctive coping mechanism as a relative system overload has left us bereft. But he is not alone in his studies of how digitization has pushed us to our limits and nor is he the first.

It all began way back in 1997 with our Nokia 210s. Microsoft researcher Linda Stone was mulling over what was then a very primitive human -technology affiliation; one that was enchanted with downloading ring-tones, ‘cool’ screen-savers and calling taxi-dad when you were stuck on the wrong side of town. Having worked for a multitude of computing companies, Stone was amongst the first to see how twenty-first century mod-cons could turn sour. “We were in the sweet spot of it,” she says, when we catch up with her (over smartphone email, of all things), “delighted with these devices that offered convenience: ‘I'm lost, I'll just call them on my cell phone,’ or ‘I'm running late, I'll just text and give them a heads up.’”

Noting the growing dependency on the new best friend permanently attached to our ears, she coined the revolutionary phrase, Continuous Partial Attention. It was a phrase that alluded to a society that never shut down, socially or mentally and had resulted in an extreme form of multi-tasking to cope. “When I talked about CPA in those days, I suggested to audiences that, for the moment, we were excited by this opportunity to be connected anywhere, anyplace, anytime. But ultimately… we would grow weary of this.”

And, of course we did.

Aside from a more complex relationship with our mobiles, a barrage of social networking sites suddenly meant we had an online presence, a presence accessible to anyone and even more alarming- one locked in cyberspace. It was a menacing component of modern connectivity when Facebook announced ownership of uploaded content, likewise an account could never de deleted should you wish, just made dormant. In short, you could never leave and never die. It was a revelation that shook the world. Furthermore it was revealed in 2008 that you could actually develop something called IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder) of which Facebook was the most common addiction. Symptoms included withdrawal symptoms, anxiety attacks and obsessive thinking about what could be going on online, etc. It was proof enough that our dependency on the Web had spiralled out of control.

The fear that we will become unwitting androids is one that has long plagued sociologists, but whilst this was all rumour and superstition, could science have accidentally stumbled upon proof of our living a logged on half-life? Linda Stone namedrops something called ‘email apnea’, a temporary absence of suspense of breathing whilst on email or mobile, namely we are quite literally ‘plugging in’ to an online moment. However, the question is, once we become an avatar how much of us is actually human?

David Giles specializes in media psychology at Winchester University and through his own studies of social networking sites (SNSs) he has deduced a striking theme that isn’t far off of actual science fiction. He explains that, “SNSs are a means of replicating yourself and leaving part of you behind, possibly forever and leaving all this material online in photos, personal preferences, blogs etc. is a small step towards immortality. Most SNS homepages only get seen by a few hundred people at most, but I also think that people still have, to some extent, a belief that everyone is logging on and looking at their websites. Thus they believe that simply having a website is a step towards immortality.” Perhaps, like Cypher in The Matrix movies we find that life is easier as an avatar, continues Giles: “We have the capacity to be the better person online; we can edit, delete and ascribe a personality to ourselves that might not be strictly true, but better.”

In the late 90s, before mobile technology and widespread computing had frazzled our brains, future talk of a cyborg globe all seemed something of a distant hallucination. We probably reacted as if Mum had just tried to change over our cartoons: ‘don’t overeact’! Comments Stone on our overzealous technological presence, “What we're seeing today is a shift into an always on mode. Even when we hope to take a break for a meal or a movie, an evening or a vacation, we find ourselves checking emails and texts we find that we're not able to break away. We're like the hamster on the wheel. In motion. Staying in motion. This contributes a lot of wear and tear on the body and the psyche.”

Our online issues became the stuff of widespread debate. New words such as ‘mouse potato’ and ‘stress puppies’ became commonplace in beehive offices to describe an unprecedented wave of net-addicts and Hulk-like work ethics. The first foray into future forecasting our descendents began in 2006 with the release of Mike Judge’s cult movie Idiocracy, a satire set in 2505AD that ran with the tagline ‘The Future is a No-Brainer’. It saw a prospective world where the inhabitants of Earth were so thoroughly inbred, lazy and addicted to token pop culture they were facing extinction.

Then in 2008 Atlantic journalist Nicholas Carr asked the question on the tip of everyone’s lips, ‘Is Google making us stupid?’ It was a pertinent point at a time when contemplative intelligence was radically being swept under the carpet to make way for prospective hardships; a looming recession caused by, what’s that, a lack of attention to detail. Carr later went on to dedicate an entire book on the subject of ‘Shallow Thinking’ in 2010. It went on to great critical acclaim. Meanwhile, author Susan Hill hit back at online reading, identifying it to be the sole cause for her sudden lack of concentration. She polemically quoted: “Too much internet usage fragments the brain and dissipates concentration so that after a while, one's ability to spend long, focused hours immersed in a single subject becomes blunted. Information comes pre-digested in small pieces, one grazes on endless ready-meals and snacks of the mind, and the result is mental malnutrition.”

Continues Stone, “CPA is an attention strategy, however there are times when it is a terrific strategy for an activity, other times when it's not. Because we are working so hard at trying to stay on top of everything, we shift into a ‘fight or flight’ state: a state of vigilance. In such a state, we are more likely to have inattentional blindness, where we see only what we are looking for so vigilantly that we miss everything else.” We have simply lost our capacity to commit to one thing for a period of time and information overload is the reason why.

Of course, these theories have been consistently challenged, overruled and deemed timely fear-mongering. One such techno- optimist Jamais Cascio through his work via the Institute for the Future and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies defends the computing age as the very proof of our supposedly flagging intelligence and says we are developing new parts of our brain as we go. “It's happening all around us,” he says speaking on behalf of trend agency Pew Research, “Across the full spectrum of how we understand intelligence: it's visible in the hive mind of the Internet, in the powerful tools for simulation and visualization that are jump-starting new scientific disciplines. We are developing fluid intelligence-the ability to find meaning in confusion and solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge."

However, the fact cannot be escaped; that whilst we have developed in and rather established new areas of digital intelligence, it is rustling a few feathers as it goes. The computing age has led to a systematic dependency on digital medias in just about every area of human life, a lack of social skills and many argue, a cultural time bomb waiting to explode.

Furthermore, there is the flipside to this so-called social erosion; with any information available at the flick of a button, perhaps, query some, we have become so fearful of being incorrect, what we know and can know becomes endless. In agnotological instances, even simple debates we once thought we knew the answers to have become clouded. Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. We assume that surely knowledge can only increase? Well, apparently not. According to Proctor, when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed and ignorance increases. To quote Farhad Manjoo in his book ‘True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society’: “If we argue about what a fact means, we're having a debate. If we argue about what the facts are it is agnotological Armageddon; where reality dies screaming.”

Of course, the fear for many is that we cannot undo what grave cultural mess we have gotten ourselves into; however the solution, according to Linda Stone is far more simple than one could have ever supposed. In a society where we spend over 30 hours a week logged-on, plugged-in and absorbing, scientists are studying the benefits of something called Earthing.“Nature is the antidote,” says Stone, “In grass, earth, trees, water and sand; we're more likely to breathe fully. We're more likely to feel replenished.”

Strange that after all our technological accomplishments, from television to mobiles, to think that there would indeed come a time when we would rely on the age old saying that, sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss.

Why Don't You Stuff Me Up?

What happens to trends after the cool-hunters have been and gone? Answer: they carry on. Lauren De’Ath explores why taxidermy will never truly die.

And so it came to be that all God’s creatures, great and small came back to life. Was it a miracle? Or, just a piece of well-positioned wire? For a time, taxidermy was la crème de la crème of the arts world; there it was, splashed like a cheap shot of Jordan all over the tabloids and broadsheets, in What’s Hot and Top Buy lists, alike. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Aside from numerous exhibitions held only in the chicest of London postcodes, it was not uncommon for stylist extraordinaire Katy Grand to use a few taxidermy hens and mice for shoots during her Pop! days and earlier this year esteemed photographer William Selden shot kangaroos and goats in preppy outfits for hipster magazine Vice. Meanwhile, king of creepy, magician Derren Brown it is rumoured keeps a pet taxidermy cat he affectionately refers to as Spasm on a living room shelf. Charmant!

Indeed, it was a great and ghoulish trend that worked its way through the cool pockets of Islington and East London faster than you could say, ”stitch’n’bitch” with sinister boutiques and nostalgic window displays boasting all kinds of wicked paraphernalia springing up weekly. And as we all know when the fashion crowds move in- you’re on to a surefire winner.

But trends are cruel. And as with all hyped merchandise, all that was glassy-eyed and stuffed was soon ditched and replaced with the impertinence of 90s fluro shades. To add insult to injury, taxidermy forever had the challenge of overcoming public doubt: “It is a little bit weird though isn’t it, y’know stuffing dead birds,” “bit dark.” Macabre. Sinister. Wrong. Strong words. These are the kind of folk who keep a deer carcass in the deep-freezer; forget the fish fingers and peas, so it really comes as no surprise then, that taxidermists are a fiercely secretive breed. They decline interview, shy behind work-sheds bedecked ceiling to floor with mounted stag heads and can ‘only type with one finger’, apparently. Yet despite all this and for a business that came to prominence during the late-Victorian era, amazingly there are more working taxidermists in the UK today than ever before. But who are these certified ‘oddballs’ and what do they want with our deceased moggies and pooches?

“Well, I quite like a good vole.” Enter Dave Hornbrook, at the moment he is busy mulling over which long-dead specimen to pluck from his freezer for the annual taxidermy championships held in the States. As the sole British representative and reigning champ, he is feeling the pressure (although he’d never let on). A straight-talking Yorkshireman through and through, his own dramatic tale of his foray into the industry, reads like a Barry Hines novel. From humble beginnings as a bored childhood hobby ‘tinkering’ with dead specimens on the moors, to a horrific car crash leaving him fighting for his life some two years ago that made him finally realise his lifelong dream. He even taught himself the well-honed craft by borrowing books from his local library, of all things. To date, he is most proud of his running hare- a mounted piece that won him third place in his first competition. A celebratory shot of which is the homepage on his website.

Like all things, it hasn’t taken long for the taxi’ trend to do its rounds; he now runs classes, in his isolated North Yorkshire town to train up a new generation of skilled zoologists that will do the industry justice. Although he is says his new protégés are hardly exemplary: “There’s more to it than people think. They often scarper once they realise how hard it really is.” The trick to a good piece of taxidermy all lies a finicky process of removing the skin of the animal whilst it’s still fresh, defatting, degreasing, fitting the model around the skin, sewing, modelling some more and then leaving the animal to dry for a week. Not for the faint-hearted, but not as perturbed a process as the public assume. “It’s not gruesome at all! But you have to be very dedicated; even now after I finish a piece, I take a step back and think, ‘Hmm, what could I do better for next time.’ I get a lot of young ladies who want to learn for some reason,” he muses, although he is utterly nonplussed as to why. “I guess they come for the nature side of it. It’s like all things that come around,” he says in his slow Yorkshire brogue. “Fashions, I suppose.”

Back in London, hidden in a not so conspicuous spot on Hackney’s Mare Street lies London’s finest purveyor of all things weird with a self-confessedly ‘disparate collection of objects’. Set up way back in 1878 by America philosopher William James, Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society stands as East London’s original gateway to ghoulish; Facebook is awash with Blackberry snaps of winged taxidermy cats apparently ‘flying’ on the ceiling and a £3000 eight foot polar bear surrounded by a harem of equally rigor-mortified characters. It is a store where seeing is indeed believing.

Ever-eloquent spokeswoman Suzette Field speaks on behalf of mysterious silent founder Viktor Wynd: “We opened up the London branch of the society in order to continue to build upon Last Tuesday’s ethos of furthering the artistic, literary and esoteric aspects of urban life,“ she says. Already an avid collector, Field jumped on the bandwagon after compadre Wynd ‘surprised’ her with an articulated skeleton of a tiny shih tzu; years later her collection is so large she uses the shop as a museum for her reams of odd bits and bods. As an art, graphic and interior designer, she has the perfect summary for why she believes taxidermy is so eternally loved: “It’s an escape! Really it is exploring all of these things within the confines of somewhere like Hackney that makes it so popular.”

Meanwhile, things are a little more grounded elsewhere. Talking about his upcoming taxidermy show in the States, Hornbrook is comparing the austere trade rules over there in comparison to the UK, “There’s this inspection at customs, see. There are some strict rules in America about what you can and can’t bring into the country- no road-kill. No kestrels and no brown owls- not even a feather can enter the country. Else, your work is taken away and incinerated. I don’t know why.” Rife with all manner of delicious opinions, he laments in about a Britain ‘overrun with cowboy taxidermists, who just don’t do things properly.’ The fear for those like Hornbrook is that it is these nonchalant vagabonds who continue to give the industry a bad name.

Stemming from the 1800s, it was a service that went to bridge an ever-expanding Empire with her people by opening up new zoological gems previously unseen by the public. But for every person awed, was another stymied- when the first platypus arrived in Britain, for example, some experts refused to accept it was a genuine species, convinced a backstreet taxidermist has sewn a duck’s beak on a beaver’s body- for with interest came the backstreet peddlers . A black market of shoddy creations shook the country, but for the virtuoso Victorians, avid collectors of anything bizarre and bewitching; a mummified hand or stuffed creature from foreign lands was a must-have above every Victorian fireplace. One fraud even passed off a variety of exotic birds native to Africa and Asia as having been hunted from his own back yard in quiet seaside town, Leonard-on-Sea. It only came to light nearly a hundred years later that he was indeed the faker, he was, but it is an uneasy mistrust that is maintained until this day.

Over the years the widespread curiosity has been replaced by suspicion and rumours of taxidermists acting like savage butchers continues to plague the profession. Meanwhile with some 30,000 working taxidermists in the US compared to just 2000 here, reports suggest a less than satisfactory culling of wild animals to satiate an obsession with trophy murders to hang from a drawing-room wall. And we can all imagine Ace Ventura’s face at such a spectacle. “Times are a-changing,” muses Dave, “You’ve got women buying chickens from the supermarket, not knowing what to do with it. People aren’t what they used to be fifty years ago.”

It is something that divides opinion in an age of ‘Fur is Murder’ PETA campaigns and political correctness. You may recall the 2009 Bodyworks exhibition by scientist Gunther von Hagens that came under some serious fire for displaying a naked corpse couple having sex and thus ‘combining the two biggest taboos left in the 21st century- sex and death.’ Artisans and partisans alike continually defend the priming of the dead as an opportunity to be close to something for further study, however intentions are sometimes assuaged for propriety.

“But, it’s the same process as preparing your chicken for your Sunday roast!” argues Katie Brookes. At twenty-four, she is stands as something of a ‘dermy newbie but whereas Hornbrook’s occupational decision was a road less taken, hers was a more standard approach. At first glance, Katie is just the taxidermy “type”, you might think. With the kind of clear-faced good looks and seemingly naturally windswept hair you’d expect of a London cool kid. Hers however is an interest that began with a certain stuffed vulture in a GCSE art class, for whilst the rest of her colleagues were no doubt raving about the latest Maccabees record, Katie was feverishly collecting roadkill and creating amateur taxidermy pieces nerdishly in her bedroom.
Having been schooled on the continent, on her arrival in London she immediately requested an internship with Polly Morgan in London (before she was famous, we might add) and set to work perfecting her craft. On her offbeat hobby, she comments: “I had been experimenting with preserving dead animals purely for drawing purposes, so it seemed like a natural progression from the unsuccessful resin casting of dead mice and birds I had been doing before. It's really great when you have started to mount the animal and you see the life it has lived: scrapes on its feet or small scars on its beak or a chunk out of its feathers or some fur that has been scarred. Its whole life becomes very apparent before your very eyes.”

It could be assumed, her creations take the place of a sort of pet, but it is just a passion for art and animals taken to new levels of admiration, no different from a taking a photograph of a loved one, or as Katie puts it ‘keeping a pair of leather shoes’. “I love the idea of an animal or bird lasting forever,” she rhapsodises. “The beautiful face, the feathers, the fur not being lost to the ground or thrown in the bin but celebrating the animal. I think I get more defensive than people in negative reactions to the work as I feel the practice is moral and is natural and enjoyable when you see a really gorgeous animal looking almost alive that will last for a long time.”

Likewise, Suzette Field is just as defensive of anti-taxidermy ignorance, claiming it is all down to public fear of the unknown, “ In our case, our shop is more of a collection that appeals to our sensibilities, from joke shop items to butterflies, from desk masks to two-headed teddy bears. If other people label them grotesque that is because they don’t share our eclectic outlook. In any case much of our stuff, for instance the taxidermy is totally natural; it’s nature preserved. As a vegetarian, I’m more disgusted by a slab of steak.”

But sadly, despite its imminent and eternal beauty, taxidermy is no longer the popular feature it once was; considered too garish for the average English household. Instead, we buy plastic tabletops from Ikea. However, we can still see the true craftsmanship in action, in the stuffed animals behind the glass at the Natural History Musuem and the likes; it allows us to get right up close to a lion, look a grizzly in the eye and see for the first time just what a dodo really does look like. Meanwhile, Dave Hornbrook offers us some exclusive top-notch advice for budding collectors; apparently, though sold cheaply for their Victorian gaudiness, taxidermy pieces in a glass case are worth thousands of pounds these days; so get busy scouting Spitalfields market, folks.

But money, science and nostalgia aside, what’s the honest reason why taxidermy is still so admired today? “Really?” concludes Suzette Field, knowingly, “It is because naturalia and zoology reminds us how nature is really the finest artist of them all.”

Mud, Sweat and Tears

Grime-encrusted squats, exasperating fashion and Radiohead- is this the reality of a life under a banner? Lauren De’Ath goes beyond the dirt to see what it takes to be a real activist?

It seems everyone’s a-jumpin’ off the mercantile wagon to smudge their faces with mud and get dirt under their fingernails. Heck, even our own king-in-waiting, Prince Charles is an eco warrior these days. Well, albeit from the comfort of his palace armchair and assisted by a CGI frog, but it’s a start. Everyone’s a have-a-go hero: from the G20 rioters to the infamous, and downright legendary, Noddy from Weymouth who sat up a tree to protest Olympic over-development.

“It’s being part of this throbbing crowd; this intrinsic fear of the police on the other side of the line; this almost spiritual chanting- it’s all very intense. That’s why a lot of people come [to protests],” says one enthusiast Alex Wood, who at 25, stands before me in a greying hooded top, as one of the primary instigators of the environmental leg of the G20 riots last month and like all good activists I met him on a street corner, handing out campaign leaflets. “You come alive; remember we’re there to make history happen.”

The British are a notoriously passive race when it comes to fighting for our rights, especially in comparison to our European neighbours; the French average a mass riot a year, whilst the Germans apparently save their angst for May Day, (where the only poles are weapons, of course; not a frolicsome dancer in sight), but none-the-less when it comes to a good old riot we are the lethargic cousin across the Channel. “Lethargic, yeah, maybe,” Alex continues, guns blazing, “But when it comes down to it we don’t mess about. We do our bit when it’s needed.” He has a point. When ripe, we limeys have rallied together for the cause; the last time we strung out our provocative banners was the Iraq war and the time before that was minor’s strikes under controversial British premier, Margaret Thatcher. However there has been a noticeable shift in the way protests have been carried out and the changes are not merely harrowing, but downright un-British.

Police reports from this year’s G20 marches noted a more visibly aggressive, readily violent and less co-operative set of protesters than normal. “Normally, we can work together; sort out what’s appropriate, establishing limits on both sides but this banter broke down this time: there were groups who by their very ethos would not and did not work with us,” one officer, told the londonpaper recently. But what’s different? The answer comes from an unwitting Alex: “We organised a lot of our events on Facebook for the G20,” he tells me. Facebook? Where events are open to anyone? “We saw a massive number of, like, well kids, this year turn up,” he admits. Attempts to salvage the sanctity of the planet were undermined by an apparently unwelcome deluge of under-agers “come for their kicks”; a deluge, Alex insists, that are not the next generation of polemicists. “They didn’t really understand what it’s all about, but on the plus side they like the label ‘eco-warrior’... I think they think it makes them sound purposeful. I don’t know if they’d still want to be as involved after having gone without a shower for a week for the sake of a few potentially homeless bats.”

For some there is a very clear definition of what it is to be an, ahem, “eco-warrior”; one such deferential acolyte is Shahrar Ali, who acts as the Green Party’s London Policy Co-ordinator in his spare time (alongside his full-time job at London’s Institute of Philosophy). Verbose and evidently scholarly, it is often difficult to see around his MP spiel; however I am reliably informed that his attendance to his more academic job often takes the back seat in his quest for mother earth’s salvation: proof that there is more to A Suit than meets our untrained eye.

He tells me- in what transpires to be one of those phone calls where you got more than you bargained for- that: “A real environmentalist assesses the harm which human beings do to the planet; they are proactive in their attempt to get us all to take collective responsibility for this and take positive steps to reverse the harms done. I think there’s a confusion between an anarchist and an activist- and the confusion is deadly to the cause, people associate it with crime and there’s a very negative aura. We need to urgently and collectively put a stop to the unprecedented harm we are doing to the planet – both in our lifetimes and for the sake of future generations.” Such passion as this has seen him campaigning for rights in Gaza; his overwhelming speech against the BBC’s controversial decision to refuse a televised Palestinian appeal, delivered through gritted teeth brought the house down, to the slightly more trivial campaign for better treatment of our fields.

Continues Alex, “There’s more to helping the environment than people think. It’s not all shouting and stamping about by motorways. The beautiful thing is your campaigns can take you anywhere; you’re bettering a global environment. Sometimes you go to places on a whim with nothing but the clothes on your back. It’s more genteel mentality, than mob mentality.”

But there’s just one more thing that’s been bothering me: are you a Radiohead fan, Alex?

Judging by his look of disgust, I’ll take that as a no then.

-Grass magazine, 2009

We Have Band

Hipsters with all their hacked black tights and crop tops have given good music a bad name. There is not a single East London kid in heavy-duty DMs and fraying denim shorts filling the pages of I.D sullenly claiming to be at least partially musical, no matter how untalented, unfriendly or wasted. Thankfully, we an aural saviour, descended from musical realms on high to deliver us from this kind of crap, we give you electric trio: We Have Band.

We Have Band are Darren Bancroft, Dede and Thomas Wegg-Prosser.

So why haven’t we heard of them before now? Well, ‘Band have earnt their brownie points a little differently from their distant ‘It-band’ cousins; shunning the fanzine route they have taken to the high road and have been touring the world for the past two years, collating a barrage of musical knowledge, life experiences and credible creative stylishness that culminated in their debut album, the subtly titled, WHB. Having garnered ‘nuff respect from leading music afionados and fans alike, the band have set themselves apart from other scene stirrers by self-confessedly dubbing themselves a ‘geek’s revenge’ (just what we like to hear at –ology). Having come a long way from playing Catch and Club Motherfucker as well as the usual barrage of European taste-making clubs, the band are now poised Spidey style, synth in hand, to set the music world alight alone.

“I guess it’s a bit strange,” is vocalist and drummer Darren’s blasé summary of the recent global tour. A day after touchdown we catch up with Britain’s hottest unconventional export and find that after all the frenetic flying to and fro over four months; from the Continent to South America, the Pacific and back, a sand fight in Dubai and a tour with semi-precious Basque rock band Crystal Fighters, it is back to reality, back to a dull Dalston and Darren is having problems with his laptop. In between raving about his new obsession with musician Twin Shadow, admitting he never really, shock horror, ‘got’ the Kings of Leon and his celebrity claim to fame was having make-up done by the animator of seasonal classic, The Snowman, we discern a fact or two about what will definitely be your next repeat-button band.

The band’s name was Dede’s brainchild, because, of course behind every great band is a great woman. “It’s the only name we’ve ever had,” admits Darren, pausing. “She’s a bit strange,” he further admits. “Before we started making music, the name was there first.” Flaxen-haired Dede, who is interview-shy, is absent, nursing a sore head from the previous night’s tour wrap party, no doubt. Her and bearded band-mate Thomas are married and together with Darren they formed after a dinner-time tipple or two lead to the trio toying with a musical note here over an old drum machine et voilà, we had band.

Having effectively lived in each others’ pockets for the past two years, one might expect a few cracks to be showing; a Doherty-Barat style rivalry, perhaps? Or a diva-ish demand for stylist B.Akerlund instead of Dede’s usual vintage garbs? How about a struggle over who sings lead in a band where all three alternate on vocals? No. It would appear not. The band has a very mature approach to what they call their ‘business’.

“We’re all quite different personalities,’ muses Darren. “I’m very talkative, whereas Dede’s quite camera-shy and then Thomas is the organised one but on top of that we’ve all been friends for a while, so we all got used to the touring situation quite quickly. The only time is before we go on stage; we all get a bit fractious with nerves and deal with it differently. Like there’ll be some friction because I’ll be chatting away and moving about and the others are more reserved and quiet and they’ll be all like ‘Ok, shut up, now’,” he chuckles.

“A lot of bands break after the first album but seem so extremely grounded, so what’s the secret to staying together, ahem forever?”
WHB: The key is to have as many fun experiences as you can, it should never be boring reality. My favourite memory I suppose was seeing in the new year on Phillips Island in Australia; playing to a thousand strong crowd with a tropical storm overhead so ferocious, it threatened to cancel the gig altogether. Everyone was outside and then suddenly everyone came stampeding inside to escape the rain and there we were playing the dance stage and it was just insane, honestly amazing. Security were going mad. It was electric.

Playing a mixture of drum machine-based electro pop, what they refer to as ‘disco-rock’, We Have Band’s musical influences come in some very grand shapes and sizes indeed, from the ethereal Kate Bush, to the robotic eeriness of Talking Heads and right back to Bjork. Some heroes, huh? “It’s people who have a strong identifiable image; people that the very moment you see them or anything to do with them, you just know, you just identify with it.” And it’s this attention to detail that has become something to define ‘Band by; with meticulous videos such as stop motion animation, You Came Out and the finicky Divisive- that comes as close as you can to Sesame Street on crack under their belts.

“We like care in everything that is done,” continues Darren. They have been dubbed the new LCD Soundsystem; no mean feat and one they are extremely wary of. They are extremely suspicious of titles and press-hyped adulation, instead adopting a refreshingly modest and chancey attitude to what they do; bandying about words like ‘fun,’ strange’ and ‘random’ in the vein of an over-excited teenager. “If you think about that kind of thing it can destroy you, you can’t really think about it too much whatever path you’re on, especially with the way the world is right now.” The key thing about ‘Band is that they don’t take themselves too seriously and thank god.

“How do you feel about this hipster scene, bands like Alice Dellal’s, for example?”
WHB: I don’t know about her but in the beginning when we were starting out we had a couple of songs on the French Kitsune albums and everyone was like, ‘Oh yeah, these are the new thing’ but then the first album came out and we weren’t hip anymore. We were talking to Crystal Castles after a gig once and they were saying how relieved they were about releasing the second album because they could be taken seriously. It’s a hurdle we all have to cross when you’re new. Like, we’re not hip anymore and I’m glad. It happens in anything, any area of industry, like in fashion with bloody Gareth Pugh. We’re just happy now to have a support band to be honest.

Given the nature of the music press’ often overzealous attitude to ‘new music’; one that raves prior to the first album and then chews you up and spits you out after, it can be quite exasperating for music fans to decipher who and what are the next band for them. We Have Band is the kind of music you listened to when music felt new and exciting; in the same way that four years ago clubs were rocking Ladytron and Long Blondes and music felt fresh and young, We Have Band are from the same calibre, the same aural generation. Their pop box-fresh synth will inevitably lure even the least discerning musical ear to the dancefloor on Friday night, an otherwise dulcet melodies belie poignant lyrics and not least because You Came Out is quite possibly the most addictive track that has ever resided in my I-tunes.

Following a self-confessedly ‘random’ year, the band will continue to make music ‘they suppose’. In the vein of so many artists these days, the band want to bring the innovative nature of their visuals on stage and live to their fans; something Darren and the band are jumping in their seats at the thought of. “Last year we did some really fun and random things and I mean we’ll see where the music takes us but I think it would be quite nice to have a visual story that runs through all the singles. You’ve got to be quite brave to do something creative, got to know what’s going on out there and stuff.”

“Thomas always says ‘I’m here for a good time, not a long time.’ The fact of the matter is that none of us really know how long this is going to last or what’s going to happen next, we just want to enjoy life as it comes.”

Long live the Band!
-ology magazine, 2011

If a Man Were Here

Dita and her teasing are world famous. Armed with a sixteen inch waist, a Lacroix corset and a life sized cocktail glass she has wowed the world over with her burlesque routines. If like me you have ever dreamt of trying to take on the corseted one herself, it is your lucky day: for £15 Danceworks offers hour-long drop-in sessions teaching the best of burlesque. So, I, armed with sunstroke, bad posture and a suppressed inner Athena take my two left feet along to a class.

Our seductress instructress is one Audacity Chutzpah, or Leela, as she is known off stage. Perked up on 6AM train-induced coffee, Chutzpah is all fun, frolics and feather boas as she leads the class in a warm-up exercise that ‘warms up our high heels’. Trying to release my inner goddess is all in the hips, the quiet clop of a seven inch heel and a gentle seductive wave of the arm apparently and walking about the parquet floor as gracefully as a ballerina, I start to feel a tad more Miss Demeanour, than Miss De’Ath.

Originally a mid-nineteenth century form of working class entertainment, burlesque meant something a little different than just the retrospective form of titillation we know today; known as ‘travesty’, it promoted a more forward-thinking female sexuality in an otherwise prudish Victorian society. The key is suggestion: “You don’t need to be a dancer,” calls Leela, coquettishly. “It’s all about facial expressions.” Two-left feet, here, breathes a sigh of relief. I am no dancer. I most certainly do not look good on the dancefloor and am a dancing embarrassment, but face-pulling, now that I can do. Amidst my pouting, pointing and suggestive winks I hear: “And now for the routine!” O heck.

The price for my complacency? A two-minute dance number to Son of a Preacher Man.
“All your poses need to look like something from a flip book. Imagine if you stopped on any one page, they’d always be beautiful,” explains our tutor, in between long exaggerated arm movements and lunges. “Keep ‘em guessing. Always wanting more,” she further advises. The routine moves between being coy prayer hands to a full blown Fem-Bot ‘boob shimmy’. “Knock ‘em dead, girls! If a man were here, he’d just die!”

Burlesque is not for insecure and a lesser person would be left a tad red-faced by such body conscious moves but aroud me are a few slightly ropey-looking girls that me and my companion deduce are here to spice up their boyfriends lives. For despite all the comedy, the playfulness and the camp scripts, burlesque is all about sex. No question about it. The fact alone that one of the requirements of the class was a pair of high heels puts Freud’s Castration Theory into perspective, and then there are the skimpy outfits and the subtle seductive elements of the routine to consider. “The great thing about burlesque is it is the only place where wobbling is allowed,” calls Leela, as we, as a troupe, shake our behinds as violently as possible.

One of the most liberating things you can do, even if I did look like I was doing the Macarena. If in search for your inner goddess, sign on the dotted line. It allows you to create a persona that is comfortable within your own limits, yet one hundred percent more smouldering then your real self. Dita-licious.

Contact Danceworks, 16 Balderton St, W1 on 07958 314107 for more details.
-Bucket List, August 2010-