london
1968
“Portobello – increasingly a hub for rebelliousness and experimentation, macrobiotic foods and street happenings – tube line, the Central – easy access to everywhere that mattered – a founder member of the London New Arts Laboratory in Robert Street – Drury Lane Arts Lab and mime sessions with the Dutch mime artist, Will Spoor – working with theatre groups embracing audience participation – Soho – Better Books – UFO Club in Tottenham Court Road with rock bands and light (liquid crystal) projections, and friends based in Camden Town, Ladbroke Grove, Covent Garden... and then all those rock concerts – memorably 'The 24 hour Technicolour Dream' at the 'Ally Pally' in Alexandra Park in 1967 with Yoko Ono's 'Cut Piece' and everyone trying to get high on banana skins... and all alongside running Dianne Lifton Ltd from home in Elgin Crescent and taxiing around London – Chelsea, Hampstead to boutiques with new designs in my carry-case..."
“Then 1968 happened…"
“In my Portobello Box:
- Part-time lecturing at the London College of Fashion on experimental design
- Leaflets and reviews on the Touch Experiment in Portobello Road
- Computer mime scripts
- Documentation of performances as Cybernetic Theatre
- Memories of my first LSD trip
- Gradual change from beatnik image to hippy”
* * *
I'm 18, you’re 23; both of us in London again after a gap (for me) of the four Derbyshire years. I’m starting at UCL, living in College Hall in Malet Street. You’re in Elgin Crescent, but your life takes you close to mine, and mine to yours. We really might have met, threading our way through the traffic on Tottenham Court Road, taking a short cut along Drury Lane or Neal Street or brushing shoulders along the pavements of the Portobello market. What would we have seen, as each looked over the other? Would we have recognised something beneath the surface, the seed of a friendship which would shape our later years? For all our geographical closeness, we were still in so many ways worlds apart…"
“In my Portobello box:
Section One (1968-1971 – an occasional visitor from WC1):
1 Indian table-runner, shiny, multi-coloured (red, green, gold) worn as a scarf
1 oversized (ex-boyfriend’s) old black jumper, perfect for the aspiring beatnik
1 pack of B&H? Embassy? Gold Leaf?...”
I'm 18, you’re 23; both of us in London again after a gap (for me) of the four Derbyshire years. I’m starting at UCL, living in College Hall in Malet Street. You’re in Elgin Crescent, but your life takes you close to mine, and mine to yours. We really might have met, threading our way through the traffic on Tottenham Court Road, taking a short cut along Drury Lane or Neal Street or brushing shoulders along the pavements of the Portobello market. What would we have seen, as each looked over the other? Would we have recognised something beneath the surface, the seed of a friendship which would shape our later years? For all our geographical closeness, we were still in so many ways worlds apart…"
“In my Portobello box:
Section One (1968-1971 – an occasional visitor from WC1):
1 Indian table-runner, shiny, multi-coloured (red, green, gold) worn as a scarf
1 oversized (ex-boyfriend’s) old black jumper, perfect for the aspiring beatnik
1 pack of B&H? Embassy? Gold Leaf?...”