The Hampstead Files: Day One

Sunday, 06:00 Hours.

The sun isn’t even up yet, even the blackbird and robin that normally regale us with song from the middle of the night have fallen silent, but Lindsey and I are very much awake. We’ve been tossing and turning for hours like washing stuck in a high-speed spin cycle.

Lindsey cracks first. She stretches and hops out of bed, leaving me, briefly, to the tender mercies of the LBC early shift. Some poor soul is currently on air attempting the impossible: arguing that Sir Keir Starmer might actually be “all right, really.” The host is having none of it. It’s a brave hill to die on at six in the morning, but frankly, it’s too early too worry about the troubles of the Labour Party.

Before I succumb to a political coma, I haul the aches and pains that plague my body out of bed. Now, before your imagination gallops down a dark alley, my physical decrepitude is not the result of a wild night in the nightclubs of Derbyshire. It is the result of Art.

Cromford calling

Let me offer an explanation. Lindsey is an artist. For twenty five years, she has had a stand at one of the Affordable Art Fairs—and for five of those at Hampstead, a well organised , sophisticated and extensive marquee on the Heath.

Last night was the Great Packing. We were at her gallery in Cromford, selecting the paintings that were to be taken to the art fair, until almost eleven o’clock. When I say “we,” I am using the term with the kind of breezy generosity usually reserved for a junior treasury minister claiming credit for a drop in inflation, while refusing to answer the rude and increasingly favoured “Yes or No” question.

My contribution included:

Carrying things that weren’t too heavy or too delicate.

Holding open bubble wrap and the special and very expensive storage bags, with an air of profound concentration.

Helping Identifying the “front” and “back” of canvases (a task of surprising complexity for the uninitiated).

The Heavy Lift

The fair doesn’t kick off until Wednesday, but the stand must be “set up” and the paintings hung attractively to draw in the customers by Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to the logistical nightmare of a Bank Holiday, the van loading had to happen this morning.

Enter Zsolt and his wife. If there were an Olympic event for the safe and efficient loading of fragile oils and water colours into a confined space, they’d have the Gold. Under Lindsey’s hawk-like gaze, military-grade planning, and the team work and experience of team Zsolt the van was loaded in record time. I hovered about on the fringes of things, trying to look busy, but the truth was, I was not needed.

By the time the drizzle started—a pathetic, British sort of rain that doesn’t have the decency to be a proper storm but just makes your glasses foggy—the job was done, and the canvases were safely stored, snug and dry in the van.

The Aftermath

Photos were taken. Handshakes were exchanged. Team Zsolt assured Lindsey that everything would be fine and so we waved them off like anxious parents sending their children to boarding school for the first time.

Then, we stepped back into the gallery.

It was… haunting. A few hours ago, the place was vibrant, humming with the ego of “New Work.” Now, the walls are a graveyard of the Unwanted. These are the paintings that have “been before” and failed to find a home. Like elderly terriers at a rescue shelter, they seem to shrink against the bare plaster, wondering why they weren’t chosen for the bright lights of Hampstead.

The walls are almost bare, and our sadness is tempered by the hope that not too many of those precious works of art will be coming back.

Next Stop: N6