Reeson & Clutterbuck
Being a 200 year human
Why Reeson & Clutterbuck?
I loved Sparknow (nee Spark Knowledge 1.11.1997, born in a moment of crisis which is another story). I never really enjoyed inhabiting Victoria Ward Limited, which was a temporary resting place after I destroyed Sparknow, my work home of nearly 20 years, for reasons I won't go into. I migrated, with Wendy and our lovely puzzlers to Jigsaw Foresight in around 2016 (although actually I would say Jigsaw originates in around 2006 when we first met). I'm very happy here with kindred spirits, even when the cashflow is a bit precarious. A blossoming and flowering of things I've been experimenting with for decades.
But it's not quite...home. Gaston Bachelard says, in The Poetics of Space
I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.
And I have found myself wanting that shelter and a little dreaming in peace, outside the wildly gorgeous collaboration that is Jigsaw (which I often mistakenly call Sparknow). Three sources of inspiration have led me to wind back to wind forward.
The first is Rosemary Hoskins who, on leaving AZ, set up a limited company using the maiden names of her grandmothers. Those names that get lost in the unfolding of the patriarchal line, at least in the UK. The second was a trip to see Ballet Shoes with friends. A favourite book from childhood. The three abandoned orphans taken under the wing of Gum (the fossil hunting Great Uncle Matthew) call themselves Fossil and vow, we three Fossils, to make the name great
We three Fossils - she said in a church voice - vow to try and put our name in history books because it's our very own and nobody can say it's because of our grandfathers.
The third is Elise Boulding on the 200 year present
A favorite concept of mine is the 200-year present, a way of thinking about change. The 200-year present began 100 years ago with the year of birth of the people who have reach their hundredth birthday today. The other boundary of the 200-year present, 100 years from now, is the hundredth birthday of the babies born today.
So, as I reach out through the future line of grandchildren and great grandchildren, I am also reaching back to two women invisible in history, but entirely present in who I am today. Meet Dolly Clutterbuck (Grandma Chalfont) and Elsie Reeson (Grandma Reading), the mothers respectively of my father, Michael Ward and my mother, Eileen Foster.
You will find me here in my day-dreaming shelter. I am looking out at the birdbath that Grandma Chalfont made, where the fairies used to leave us little treats. A hop and a skip from the bungalow over the hill where my grandfather gardened and Grandma Reading made three meals a day and where I spent many weekends cramming for finals, in a dining room where you could see your breath, tucked up under pink candlewick and blankets tucked so tight you were sardined in for the night, fed scrambled egg in bed for breakfast to keep me well fuelled. (A special extra thanks to Grandma Reading for a teenage introduction to Jilly Cooper, which has left me with an insatiable appetite for terrible puns.)
I will do my best as I gather in assemblages and combinations of work and wondering since 1997 to keep looking both backwards and forwards as I go.
Dolly, Dorothy Julia Clutterbuck b. 16 May 1897 Chiswick, London d. 8 March 1974 Cowfold, W.Sussex (left)
Elsie, Elsie Emma Reeson b.19 November 1908 Lambeth, London d. 20 September 2003 Cambridge (right)
www.reesonandclutterbuck.com