Drawing Comparisons

Today I disguised myself as a man, went and sat in a pub, and drew the barmaid. Been doing it for years (drawing barmaids, in disguise): the sketches are terrible - no progress - but I’m not concerned about the end result (whether the drawing’s any good or not). No. It’s the dualism, the synchronicity, the mimicry - the comparison that can be drawn between the actions of the barmaid and myself - that draws me back, time and again. I can disguise myself but you can’t disguise the facts: I’m drawing the barmaid as she’s drawing pints.

I’m filling the page as she’s filling a glass. Both of us are drawing a substance with a head (and beer, like a barmaid, has to have ‘body’). Dark ink flows from my pen as dark-ale drips from her tap. As I’m drinking her in with my eyes can she see through my disguise? We’re both using only one hand: she pulls at work; I pull at home. We both have one arm thicker than the other. She’s using optics; I’m using optics

Everything is connected. Aleister Crowley’s family brewed beer: the family’s wealth lay in the brewing of Crowley Ales. They also owned a number of drinking shops, akin to present-day wine bars, known as Crowley’s Alehouses. Edmond Yates (founder of Yates’s Wine Bars) in his Recollections and Experiences (1884), stated, “Crowley’s Alehouses were small shops fitted with a beer engine at the counter”. Air Ships have engines and Crowley wasn’t exactly close to his family. During the First World War Crowley sent a letter to Count Zeppelin to complain about the inefficiency of German bombing raids over Britain. He wrote, “A great deal of damage was done at Croydon, especially at its suburb, Addiscombe, where my aunt lives. Unfortunately her house was not hit. Count Zeppelin is respectfully requested to try again. The exact address is Eaton Lodge, Outram Road”.

Planes have engines too. But look, this one is also equipped with a head - a head that combines beer and engines and optics: a head with an eye (optics and beer engine pumps again): a head that throbs and froths.

And look at Crowley’s self-portrait again: head to head. Onwards and upwards (but don’t confuse this with progress): I can’t stop drawing comparisons.

Miss Under-Handing Self-Arming

I hadn’t been a barmaid for five minutes (four years, to be exact) when the landlord announces: “The pub has just been granted university status”. Our ‘local’ is now a learning establishment… has become a franchise college”. And the landlord is now the dean.

Pub? University? Pole-dancing venue? 

Dean; Golf Course Management: Déjà view. But who was I to complain? I was allowed to keep my (barmaid’s” top on, and was promoted on the spot (well, on the barstool, actually). From now on my title was to be: Senior Barmaid on TAP, on a two-arm-pull ups fast track, foundation-studies-year in Bar Management. It works like this: if the student does enough two-armed-pull ups (thus passes the TAP) then they can go on to take an OAP (one-arm-pull ups) Honours Degree. They’d then be qualified to study for an MA in OFPs (one-finger-pull ups); followed by a PHD in OAPs and OFPs, combined. And then - and only then – after fifteen years of study (a long, hard, pull) – are they fit to go out into the pub as a barmaid.   

Here’s the scene. I’m summoned to the dean. And you guessed it: the dean’s a half-only-reformed pub landlord, with one hell of an over-manned arm (his other arm’s normal – girly even, some say). So you can imagine my surprise when the dean says, “This education establishment is over-armed, I intend to make cuts”. “Cuts in arms?” I protested. “Doesn’t that sort of thing have a name? Surely you can’t be suggesting self-arming?" But the dean doesn’t pull his punches. “Funding is down and we going to have to raise the bar (the pull-up bar). We are going to have to recruit younger OAPs - and it doesn’t matter if they’ve not got any GCSEs - we need to be seen to be training OAPs to work in breweries: they come to us straight from school, and graduate as OAPs”. "But that’ll bring the country to its knees – they’ll be pensioned-off before they’ve had chance to pay any contributions”, I reasoned.

The dean pulls his mobile out and scrolls to the photograph of a young girl, smoking. Her right arm – her smoking arm – is absolutely enormous; her left arm’s normal – girly – teeny even. “I sometimes wonder what good a university education is, for youngsters like this”, the dean lamented. “Look at the size of her arm? It’s almost as big as mine; and I’m a dean and she’s only a teen. Imagine how big her arm will be, compared to the rest of her, when she’s old enough to pull pints in pubs? A born-barmaid if I ever saw one… if the smoking doesn’t kill her first". “And I thought smoking stunted growth?” I interjected. “That’ll explain why she didn’t flinch when I pulled out a tape measure and measured her arm... to get her vital statistics before we offered her a place”, the dean said. “And she didn't respond to my request for a light. We should read this as a good sign; we don’t want them to listen, think - voice an opinion and the like. Let’s pull them all in, turn them round quick, and get them out again, out on the pull”. As he spoke, the dean was drawing on a cigar the size of a baby’s arm.

"Look, dean, forget the teen”, I said, as I drew my own mobile out of my shoulder holster (well, my beige bra, to be exact), pointed it at the former pub landlord, and scrolled to a photograph of a woman on her knees with her arm stuck up a downpipe. “Look at this mature student who graduated with TAP, OFP, OAP honours last year: a model student who went out into the real world and wasn’t afraid to get her hand dirty; wasn’t coy about her plumbing". “Did you give her one?” inquired the dean (although he could grasp a beer-tap, our dean still didn’t possess a clear grasp of academic lingo). “I gave her a first, if that’s what you mean. Of course I did, she more-than deserved it”, I replied. “And furthermore, I think it’s scandalous that we are thinking of cutting an arm like hers in times like these”. “First. My arse”, blurted the dean.

I undid my Timex, loosened my cufflinks, and was about to roll-up my shirtsleeve, when the dean, with the look of a man looking to a dark-future, said, “Stop. You can’t have heard me right.” Then he paused. “No, on second thoughts, my door is always open to Miss Under-Handing. That’s it. Let’s open a university of misunderstanding. Do you still want to be a woman? Good. You can be Miss Under- Handing. Go on, go out and get yourself a new Kimono; and brush-up your Chinese. You are now our new head of Misunderstanding. Go out. No. Get out. Recruit me an army of cack-handers".

The Barmaid's Arms

What was a pub landlord doing at a Photography lecture? What was I doing, talking about arms and ‘pulling barmaids’, with a passing-nod to Rose Selavy’s ‘ready-mades’? After the lecture, in the bar (where else?), the pub landlord, stalks me - sweet-talks me - tells me I come over ‘all exotic’ – I’ve clearly got pulling-power: a cross between an oar and a mermaid. But I think he’s pulling my oar (leg) when he says, “Why didn’t I come and pull pints in his pub?” So I get an interview to be a barmaid.

The interviews were taking place the following morning, in a disused lido. Beer taps (and optics) had been installed on the walls (sides) of the dry pool. The idea being: the interviewees demonstrate their skill by slowly filling the dry pool with ale. But what does a girl wear to a job-interview in an empty swimming pool? Something that looks as dazzling dry as it does wet but can still leave an impression, when moist. The top also needs to double as a lifejacket in event of the interview going tits-up: “Not waving but pulling”. Either way: not drowning. I need to wear something attractive, eye-catching, and buoyant. The top can’t be too low-cut and has to show a bit of arm. No, what am I thinking: it has to show a lot of arm. And I know what you’re thinking: Shespy, your personal shopper, let Shespy choose your top. Shespy. Topshop. Wrong. A mistake. Shespy’s (own) tops are almost always very low-cut and the one’s that aren’t, are dangerously unbuttoned. No: even Ispy Shespy (in that way). Talking of tennis balls. I need false breasts and tennis balls float, as well as bounce.

Normally, I’m not the kind of man who’d steal women’s clothing off a washing. But I’ve never wanted be a barmaid before: I don’t know what normal is anymore. So when I spy this little sleeveless rhubarb and custard number flapping in the breeze, on a washing line, I was over the garden wall like a shot: “the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind”. 

And when I came across the dog-eaten innards of a pink tennis ball - washed-up on the beach – with a dash of pink fluff beautifully complementing the rhubarb and custard of the stolen top I’d just nicked – I had a breast to boot, and a buoyant one at that, albeit only one.

The interview got off to a good start: the pub landlord and a good-looking life were questioning me. I pulled a few pints into the empty lido. They were both wearing lycra shorts, and were clearly impressed by my wrist action. But as the beer rose up to my thighs, I found myself unprepared for their psychological approach: word-association: They said, “pull”. I said, “up”. They said, “bar”. I said, “dog-eaten tennis-bra”. They said, “lemon and lime”. I said, “washing line”. They said, “service”. I said, “tennis”. They said, “bitter”. I said, “tart”. They said, “mixer”. I said, “transvestite”. They said, “transparent-top” (the beer was up to my chest by now). I said, “vest”. They said, “Finger”. I said, “strength”. They said, “skirt”. I said, “length”. They said, “barmaid”. I said, “mermaid”. They said, “Rudolf Hesse”. I said, “cross-dress” (I wasn’t going to be tricked in to saying, SS). They said, “Spandau”. I said, “ballet”. They said, “prison”. “I’m too good looking”, I said. They said, “beer”. But I wasn’t going to be tricked by beer. So I said, “hunter”. They said, “cider”. I said, “straw”. They said, “pour”. I said, “oar”. They said, “Blouse”. I said, “big girl’s”. They said, “biceps”. I said “curls”. They said, “pub signs”. I said, “The Barmaid’s Arms”. They said, “barstools”. “I’d take no shit”, I said, “job”? They said, “it’s yours”. 

Shespy(s) The Writing On The Wall

Big room, in front of a big audience – a young audience: I’m talking about OAPs. I talk about OAPs at lots of universities; even though one-arm pull-up mastery, unlike Golf Course Management’, is not yet a degree subject. I’m invited – my reason for being there at all, is to talk about photography. But I rarely do. I show them photographs all right: photographs of one-arm and one-finger pull-ups (mainly, photographs of myself, pulling; on, or in, the past). Nobody seems to object. Don’t forget: it’s the finger that fires the camera - I could be talking Photography after all.

Me, finding a vein (in myself) in front of an audience

I’m talking arms but I sometimes wonder how it affects their minds; university, nowadays, is all about training for a career; not leaning for learning’s sake – pulling for the sake of a pull – a life experience (rather than an experience for life).

And there’s no future in one-arm-one-finger pull-ups. According to the Guinness Book Of Records, only one person in one hundred thousand can chin a bar one-handed. But that’s the secret of a good lecture. Talk as if you are addressing just one person, you only have to reach-out to – touch - one individual. Anyhow, I keep getting invited back. I occasionally punctuate the talk with photographs of barmaid’s arms (it injects a little ‘glamour’ – I am after all being paid to talk about photography): images of me measuring barmaid’s arms – proving – providing photographic evidence that proves, that in seasoned barmaids, one arm – the pulling arm - is always thicker than the other. Perhaps I’m training photographers to become barmaids? All right for the women. But training transvestite- photographers - in off-the-shoulder-frocks - one arm massive, one arm withered (half Ian Dury, half Fatima Whitbread): pulling pints when they should be pressing shutters. A pretty unbalanced thought: references Diane Arbus.

I’m at University College, Falmouth (big dark room; big young audience), I’m showing them a photograph I’ve been looking at since I was twelve: the legendary John Gill, Maths Professor, Godfather of ‘bouldering’, doing an OAP, topless, in a cave. 

It would be impossible to underestimate the importance of this photograph of Gill, on my right arm. 

Directly after showing Gill pulling, I show a photograph of me presenting my arm to the camera - during a family holiday in Switzerland in 1977 - demonstrating the amazing effects of seeing the Gill photograph, and of only a year of one-arm-pulling. The rest is history. I’ve pulled every day since.  Shespy’s in the front row – she’s my age. You might wonder why my personal shopper’s attending a lecture on pulling. Maybe she thought (like everyone else) it was going to be a talk about snapping? Either way, I never give lectures on shopping. But here’s a woman in a shop doing a one-arm-pull-up.

When the talk is over and the applause has finally died down, shespy comes over and asks for my autograph. I think, funny, shespy witnesses my signature all the time – every time she points me at a purchase in fact - so why here, and now? Unnaturally (for me), I refuse. “That’s interesting”, Shespy says. “This is the second time today you’ve failed to acknowledge your own name”. “What are you on about”, I protest. Shespy explains: “When you were showing that photograph of Gill doing an OAP in the cave, I was waiting for you to mention the fact – a fact that seemed blatantly obvious - that your name – Greg – was written on the wall in front of Gill’s eyes. The writing was quite literally, ‘on the wall’, right in front of his face – right under his nose. Indeed, it looked as if Gill had risen up there in order to come face-to-face with you. Greg. Spooky. To think, while you’ve been worshiping Gill all these years, he was worshiping you first, as it were. Gill’s quite literally, ‘lifting himself’ – rising-up - in front of your name. He met you before you met him, so to speak. The writing was already on the wall.”

That’s the thing with photographs: you have to look both through and at them at the same time. I’d been looking through this photograph for thirty-four years yet never once recognised my own name. Now, thanks to Shespy, my personal shopper, all I see is: the Great Gill, pulling over me. 

For more information on the 'amazing' John Gill, visit his wonderful website: www.johngill.net