Accrington Red Brick Coalbunker Interzone

Coal, brick (whether sooty or bright red), clay, soil, stone. These are my elements. I adore the smell of coal cinders. Like the dun green colour of the painted prefabs and shelters then still to be seen at the top of Moss Hall Road, the dank, tangy smell of cinders constitutes a very early memory.

Every week the coal man (a jolly, noisy chap I recall) would drop off a few bags in our concrete coal bunker in our new house on Whalley Road. I would then clamber onto the structure, and try to look into next door’s garden, for their cat Milly (was it Milly?), an irascible tortoiseshell. Or peer over the road to the NORI brick stacks. I would bang my drum (a 2nd, or 3rd birthday present) and wear my dad’s Heworth Colliery Band hat.

My past is my playground.

Interplanetary Accrington Trench System #1

Whether through tending allotments in Felling and Accrington, throwing up improvised saps at Gallipoli, Antwerp and the Ypres salient, or mining East Lancashire (by way of Altham Pit), my family has had long experience of digging. I used to dream of giant horses cavorting, huge limbs and half torsos writhing in the mud under our house; maybe the spirits of buried pit ponies, returned in giant form to remind me of this subterranean heritage.

When my parents moved from the bungalow on Moss Hall Road to a semi detached (with a back garden and a backs) on Whalley Road I grasped the opportunity to dig trench systems in the overgrown, toad-infested No Man’s Land of our backs. I would wage war with spirits seen in the Larousse Dictionary of Mythology (introduction by Robert Graves). My brother went further, seeing the garden as a form of Stalag, tunnelling under the trellis to escape into the Eden of the front garden.

My past is my playground.

Our Visions Became Laden With Willow-Wept Grief

To the people of the British Isles. Although these are times of great division and no little confusion. Remember, your greatest strength is your easygoing tricksiness. I have witnessed this at first hand in factories and at check-out counters. Keep it up.

Drawing my strength from Watkins, I bring balm in the form of two early 1990s photocopies, aligned on the Mill Hill-Felling leyline. A North Yorkshire spanner is thrown amidships, courtesy of some pre-Foot and Mouth sheep. Staring into the camera with a disinterested patience – and the countryside not caring.

Welcome to the Museum of Photocopies

Welcome to the Museum of Photocopies.

The museum is open to visit at all hours.

The images you see in each post are selected from the archives of the owner and curator of the museum, Richard the Photocopier. They are sketches, photographs, old letters, envelopes, receipts, visiting cards, book pages or other items that Richard decided to keep over the course of the last 30 years. Some of the archive materials were photocopies in the first place, as Richard has found that the act of photocopying ephemera pleases him.

The items are arranged into new forms, reworked or coloured, photocopied, photographed and then uploaded to the museum.

All items are free to download and photocopy. Maybe your photocopy will be the only one in the world.

Or not.