Jacky Puzey

For Shade Home at Ika and Jenny’s, we though about land and poetry, tea and making new communities. We met our guests at Clifton Suspension Bridge, where Shade Hostess Jacky Puzey introduced the project.

Shade Explorer Leiza McLeod sang an amazing gospel song, Wade in the Water, to remember everyone who has passed over or under that bridge or along the river into Bristol’s histories of trade and communities.

With our hosts Ika and Jenny, we then remembered the author who had originally brought them together to Bristol, science fiction author Diana Wynne Jones, and Jenny and Ika led everyone in a remembrance dance for her.

Our Landowner/Poet issued a different kind of ticket to Clifton, and we began from the Suspension Bridge with remembrances for everyone who had sailed that river, led by Shade Activist China Fish.

Then the Shade Dandy took over the parade. After serenading the Shade Landowner with ‘Give me Land lots of Land..’, the musicians and Shade Dandy took to the Mall to ‘put on the Ritz’.

The Shade Dandy then preened and paraded through the gardens outside Rodney Place, as we headed for our Shade Home for that night.

The Explorers served soups in the garden, before we headed into the hallway of the Shade House for that evening, up towards Ika and Jenny’s flat. Shade Hostess Jacky read from Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, about passports and Malawian customs officers. Shade Activist China declared that she would lead guests to a land with no borders, and sang…..we will be heard…

When we reached the flat, Explorer Leiza enticed everyone to tamarind mojitoes, and the Shade cartel paraded on the stairs to the sounds of Utt Da Zoy, the tailor’s lament, as re-interpreted by Shade and Cab Calloway. ( the link to this original song is on the Shade Artist diary page – Jacky Puzey)

Then we all, cooks, guests, performers and hosts sat down to dinner.

Sally cooked curries, and people talked about what home meant to them, writing on the tags on the placemats, sharing recipes for food and what to do with unexpectedly shrunken woollen jumpers! The UK citizenship test questions were put to the test, lead by Jenny who had direct experience of them, having moved to the UK from Australia.  Most people discovered that they would have failed the test to enter a country they regarded as ‘theirs’ or in some way ‘home’.

What does it mean to be a guest and move countries? Landowner Baljinder Bhopal announced a change of borders, and opened her recycled designer handbag, showing guests a whole new set of maps, allegiances to Jimmy Choo and radical recycling. More guests circumvented conventional borders and arrived by Skype onscreen.

As the Landowner’s bag opened, and the maps included a hole dug to reach Australia, host Jenny noted the unexpected problems of gardening in Melbourne, when all the Brits kept arriving under the flowerbed, having dug their way down from the childhood sandpit joke in the UK ; “Are you digging to reach Australia??”

Puddings were served, Victoria sponge from guest Paul,  Cornish heavycake from guest Andrew and the Shade Hostess Jacky’s pineapple crumble.

Guests were also invited to have new passport portraits made, chosing the suits, backdrops and poses of their choice. The evening ended with a tea lucky dip, from Ika and Jenny’s library of teas,  teas for calm, love, energy -  a tea divination ceremony! Reflecting on tea drinking as a shared activity, family memories of travel, and the trade wars that resulted in tea being England’s iconic drink. One of the Shade tablecloths on this night was dyed with tea and stencilled with coffee and sugar.

Thanks very much to Ika and Jenny for being our generous Hosts for the evening, and to all our guests for being part of  the many magic moments that make up a Shade Home event.

Thanks also to Cedar and Sally, for Sally’s curries, and both of them  running the set up and backstage in the kitchen brilliantly.