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Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair, Albert Hall, Nottingham 10/6/16

In these post-post-modern times anything from the 1920s to the 1980s seems to count as “Vintage”. Is it all bunting and nostalgia? I went along to Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair to find out.

The term “Vintage” tends to get bandied around rather loosely and has degrees of meaning from “genuinely antique and collectable” to merely “second hand”.

Nottingham has had a healthy “Vintage” scene since the 1990s, when the kitsch emporium Daphnie’s Handbag was a stalwart purveyor of crimplene frocks, over-sized sunglasses and easy listening vinyl, at their shop on Mansfield Road. These days Daphnie’s (and many other dealers) find their home in Hopkinson, a warehouse full of trinkets, homeware, clothes and other tastefully aged rammel.*

With the demise of Trinity Walk’s Vintage To A Tea, where genuine 1930s to 1970s clothes came with the wonderful expertise of the proprietor, I was hoping to see some good examples of Vintage clothes at Lou Lou’s.

Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair is a national concern with gatherings most weekends in cities across the UK. Winner of ‘Best Vintage Fair’ in the UK at the National Vintage Awards 2015, some impressive photos in their Facebook marketing led me to go along to the Albert Hall to check it out. As an avid rammel hunter myself, my expectations were high.

There were several clothes stalls at Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair, with a good spread of women’s and men’s garments, edging towards the garish end of the dressing up spectrum. Prices were fairly high (more in line with Nottingham’s Braderie, Cow and Wild Clothing vintage stores) but there were a few genuine gems if you had the cash to splash.

The best clothes of the day were spotted on fellow fair-goers, with several spectacularly turned out 1950s ladies in evidence (full net petticoats and co-ordinated head gear present and correct) and more than one or two gents in tweeds.

loulous 2

A soundtrack of 1960s girl groups segued into Bowie as I moved between the two floors of the Albert Hall, holding at least 30 stalls. Many concentrated on jewellery and other accessories, offering a rather hit and miss selection of proper old stuff and more modern bling. For the prices, I would have preferred more focus on the original pieces, some dealers have a good eye for the real thing, others offer all their wares at a fixed price and leave it to the customer to dredge the gems from the dreck.

Several of the traders who make their day to day home in Hopkinson had stalls at Lou Lou’s, including Woolf Vintage and Arts, who had a nice line in earrings and the Forgotten Library who turn old books into clocks.

Other traders such as Derby’s Soboho, made a showing (with a lovely 1960s handbag that was sadly out of my price range) and hat designer Alice Ball entertained a steady stream of customers trying on her vintage-inspired creations.

There was more crockery and homeware than I’d been anticipating, with a good showing for Meakin coffee sets, china cups and a smattering of flashback-inducing toys. There was an air of grandma’s attic about some of these and a little more curation of the objects would perhaps justify the asking prices. A surfeit of cake stands was overshadowed by the “everything’s a pound” cups and saucers, but there were an impressive haul of cake forks and cutlery on offer.

crockery collage

The refreshment stall was mercifully free of cup cakes, serving beverages in china cups and saucers in the busy foyer. Alongside them, the Diamond Diva’s Beauty salon was setting hair in victory rolls – I didn’t spot any beehives but it was consistently busy.

Lou Lou’s seems like a really popular event, with a steady stream of people through the doors all day, I don’t know how much stuff people actually buy at such events, but plenty of folk rummaged through the displays.

*Rammel: Notts noun. Discarded or waste matter, junk, rubbish.
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Death & Chips: But I Know This City, B S Johnson in Nottingham

This weekend saw me drop everything and head into Nottingham for a series of connected events that I only realised were taking place when I fortuitously caught a tweet promoting this article in Left Lion.

Left Lion #73 November 2015
Left Lion #73 November 2015

I had forgotten or perhaps misremembered that Nottingham was the unnamed but vividly described city that features in B S Johnson’s book-in-a-box The Unfortunates. I had added this experimental novel to my very long list of “books to get around to” after devouring Jonathan Coe’s biography of Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant some years ago, but never found a copy and it had fallen out of my mind as newer books with less dark themes had usurped my attention.

On Friday night it transpired that Jonathan Coe was to be in Nottingham at the behest of the Broadway to present Dead of Night the celebrated Ealing Studios portmanteau film made in 1945. As it turns out, the keen cinéaste Coe uses the structure of five connecting stories for his latest novel Number 11… his earlier novels What A Carve Up and The House of Sleep are among my favourites.

After Dead Of Night, talking about his new book and signing copies for the faithful, Coe stayed at Broadway to present a rare screening of films by B S Johnson including the idiosyncratic documentary Fat Man On A Beach, which had introduced Johnson’s work to Coe when he was a child…

BS Johnson in Fat Man On A Beach (The Arts Desk)
B S Johnson in Fat Man On A Beach (The Arts Desk)

Fat Man On A Beach is funny, strange, confounding, silly and, with the fore knowledge of Johnson’s early demise just weeks after it was broadcast in 1974, deeply effecting.

It served as a wonderful re-introduction to the author and a fitting prelude to the following day’s event, But I Know This City a community reading of The Unfortunates organised by Excavate theatre for Being Human Festival.

Not entirely sure what to expect, my friend and I showed up at Broadway for the first chapter and began a whole day of extraordinary experiences finding readers at locations all over Nottingham.

The beginning... the first sighting of Bryan at Broadway.
The beginning… the first sighting of Bryan at Broadway.

In 25 cafes, basements, bookshops, several pubs, a parked car, a front room (on the Promenade, my dream street), inside the Council House and performance pods at Nottingham Playhouse, we found ourselves asking “Are you Bryan?”.

But I Know This City Map
But I Know This City Map (Excavate)

Rehearsed readers at each location read the loose-bound chapters of The Unfortunates and gradually the novel was reconstituted as Johnson’s memories of Nottingham, reporting on football matches, his student days and his friend Tony came into focus. Descriptions of food (memorably some chips that redeem a meal), of meetings and visits, of friends and lovers recur through the story woven around recollections of the illness and heartbreaking early death of Johnson’s Nottingham friend Tony.

Readers in L
“Bryan” in Lee Rosies, Rough Trade and Bookwise

The Nottingham of the 1960s was vividly conjured as many of the locations we visited over 8 hours (with a long break for lunch) were described.

An examination of grief and the nature of memory, The Unfortunates is at times raw and intensely moving, qualities emphasised by these intimate readings, leaning in to hear in the noisier venues, huddled around pub tables, scurrying through the freezing dark to find the last few venues…

Following Bryan all the way to the top floor of City Arts
Following Bryan all the way to the top floor of City Arts.

Back at Broadway we tracked down the last two readers, driven inside by the cold. Two more chapters read to us in the bar.

We managed to witness the final chapter (thank you Andy) and the collected props in the Broadway’s lounge and were among around a dozen people to experience all 27 chapters… including Jonathan Coe’s recording of the shortest chapter.

The end. Some of the props, collected in the Broadway lounge.

Tweets from the day #ButIKnowThisCity

Nottingham author (and Bryan for the day) David Belbin’s blog on But I Know This City of Literature.