To enter a shop alone as a mid-twentieth century child is as complex as a peace treaty. They are not friendly spaces. They have codes as mysterious as going unarmed into the lair of a wild animal,  challenged to fight in a duel, ordered to dance a minuet, negotiate a house sale, perform a ritual of gift exchanges in a foreign land and language, show deference and anticipate nervously a change in the rules of queuing, dependent on who is serving you today, who is behind you, who your parents are, the size of your house, your friendships, your religion, which pub your parents frequents or do they frequent pubs, what you are wearing, how your hair is cut. The shopkeeper may as well point a gun, demand I do not pass the threshold and shoot me dead. 

Inside art school note books and sketch pads, in the margins, I see doodles, scribbles, sketches, prose, essays, aspirations, chronicles, valedictory huff and puff, drawings of the 'perfect' eye, boys' names, plans, rescues, defeats. I can see subliminal messages to the future, look what you were, became, are, and how you became you.