Loading...About The Speaker...
I am a 60 something , ok 65 year old retired Architect. I spent 71/2 years training, gained my RIBA in 1984 and then spent two years replacing all the toilets at Paddington Station. My career with British Rail was brief. Together with the BR Sandwich I was one of the first to be privatised never to fulfil my destiny and emulate Brunel.
But I was one of the fortunate ones. In 1978, when I first started work as a mere “Part 1 Student” there were no mobile ‘phones, no faxes, no emails. The RIBA gave us five days to respond to any reasonable request for information. Email reduced that to 5 minutes, the mobile to 5 seconds. I learned to draw using pen & ink, with drawing boards of teak, propped up on brick samples, chipped T-squares , not quite square set squares, and stencils. The foreman would call my “sir”, probably spelled “cur” .
This is a Portrait of the Architect as a Young Man. The early years of my career, 1978 to 1984 before AutoCad, in-car-telephones, “Design & Build” and the so called “Project Managers”. It was just SO MUCH MORE FUN in those far off days
About Their Talks...
This is a rip-roaring rib tickling absolutely NOT ” Pevsner on the Medieval Architecture of Hampshire” , journey down my memory lane, punctuated with the funny, the dotty and the downright ridiculous.
The construction industry is full of characters, builders who don’t understand the importance of right angles, Project Managers who couldn’t manage a bun fight in a bakery, quantity surveyors with the skills set of a wizard who could work magic on the “final account”, structural engineers who doubled the size of everything “so that they could sleep at night” and others whose contribution to the built environment felt like a dark art.
Meet Emelia Fox from “Silent Witness”, “Call the Midwives” and the occasional angel ( I was hallucinating at the time, high on Oramorph) who work for the NHS. Meet Larry the Lamb, tethered to a steel post on a council estate in Denham. Wild geese, irritated Alsatians, the “Ugly” Man who married the “Nasty ” Woman, Copperkins, Piper’s Haunt, Dun Roamin, my rusty Cortina 2000E and Ken’s “Fornicatorium”.
This isn’t any old architecture, this is Julian’s architecture. The absurd, the ridiculous, the stupidity. The “why wasn’t he recognised with an RIBA Gold Medal?”
Fee:
I don’t charge a fee, so why do I do this? Well, 18 months and I think 35 “gigs” later, and several thousand pounds to the better, because it keeps me sane, I enjoy meeting people, making them laugh and I owe a debt of gratitude to Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK as they support me through my “cancer journey”, more especially as I move into days of uncertainty.
That in mind, and a dose of tiredness, I’ve set a new limit of a maximum of 90 minutes travel from Portsmouth, by train – exceptions to be made if you throw in lunch – PROBUS, note !!!.
I expect a donation proportionate to the number of people in the room multiplied by the number of laughs. ( I don’t get out of bed for less than fifty quid) Everything I bring in ( less reasonable travel expenses) goes to Macmillan Cancer Support or CRUK. The salary of my oncology nurse and psychologist is paid by Macmillan. Be generous! I try to use public transport where ever possible and charge transport at cost. I just ask for a lift from the closest Railway Station ( and I do have a RailCard )
