‘Can I give you a hand with your bag?’
‘No, thanks. This ain’t my first rodeo,’ she replied, battering her enormous suitcase up the two-hundred-year-old wooden stairs.
(Sand and repaint stairs, I internally added to my infinite snagging list.)
I showed her to her room. The beautiful ‘Garden View Room’, just recently decorated by me in a soothing, subtle stony pink.
‘Where can I put my mosquito net? I need a hook over my bed for it. I’ve got Skeeter Syndrome. A severe allergy to mosquito bites.’
It was mid-summer in the South of France at a property with over an acre of land, and she would be in-residence for four weeks.
A f*ck-ton of mosquitoes was guaranteed!
We have a two-stage application process for our artist residencies. The initial application form comes through our website, but we follow this up with a secondary one, which asks a few more personal questions to ensure that it will be a comfortable, supportive, and successful experience for all involved.
One of these questions is: Do you have any allergies?
Her answer: Bee stings. Some chemicals.
‘You didn’t think to mention your major allergy to f*cking mosquitoes?!?!’ I thought. ‘We would NEVER have agreed to let you come here in August had we known. Not a chance! We would have suggested Spring or Autumn. That would have been perfect for you. But this… no way!’
What could we do about it though? She was here now. My perfect paint job punctured, and, for her, a month effectively confined in this room.
The weather was fantastic for the duration, and evening gin & tonics were enjoyed in the garden with the other two residents, an author from Brooklyn and a theatre designer from Berlin. Two interesting and lovely people. Friendships were built, ideas were discussed, and we laughed at stories shared. All the while, she could only enjoy the garden from the windows of her room, and this golden opportunity to expand her creative community was lost.
If a question is asked on an application form, it is there for a reason. Don’t skip over it, leaving a blank for the reader to read into, potentially incorrectly. No matter which residency you’re applying to, be that funded or self-funded, prestigious or artist-run, the competition will be high, and a blank space may well result in an unsuccessful application.
We’ve hosted over two hundred residents now, but have turned down over three hundred.
To my surprise, not one single person has answered the question ‘Have you ever been convicted of a crime?’ in the affirmative!
I can’t be the only one, can I?
I was 12 years old, and she was called Tiffy.
‘Tiffy, Tiffy, give me a stiffy’ the boys would chant at this Swedish bombshell who’d arrived in my neighbourhood.
She went to my school for a couple of weeks but was soon ‘asked to leave’ due to her rebellious nature. I was smitten, and we were inseparable. We’d hang around on street corners, scrounging cigarettes from passersby (she’d always be the one who had to ask, with her strong foreign accent, so she could pretend she didn’t understand if they responded negatively).
She had a devil-may-care attitude, which thrilled me. We’d go around the shops in town, and she’d nonchalantly try on jewellery, then calmly walk out the door as if she’d forgotten she had it on. ‘Woops!’
She made it look easy.
We were in Boots the chemist on Princes Street, the main shopping street in Edinburgh. They sold an ‘extensive range of health and beauty products from leading brands, fragrances for her and him, and much more.’
I picked up a blusher, held it in my hand, and continued trying testers of makeup. The mascara slipped easily into my pocket, as did the lipstick. I walked on, blusher still in hand, to examine some hair products, accidentally forgetting to put them back. My hands, carefully disguising their fullness, as we reached for the door back out onto the street, my heart pounding in my ears.
Hand on shoulder.
‘Come with me, please.’ the security guard commanded firmly but quietly.
We were ushered through the shoppers to a room at the back, where they sat us down to show us their on-screen evidence:
‘You picked up a blusher here and kept it in your hand. Here we see you putting a mascara into your pocket and here a lipstick….’ They’d been onto us from the start.
As Tiffy sat stony-faced, seemingly indifferent to the impending consequences, the tears began to roll down my cheeks, and my stomach churned. I desperately needed the toilet all of a sudden. I was literally crapping myself!
A female security guard took me to the row of public toilets, but insisted I left the door open to ensure I didn’t flush any undetected contraband. I was emotionally damaged by that moment forever more, traumatised by having to pooh in front of a stranger.
It was an important day for my mum, as the parents of her new boyfriend were coming for dinner. ‘Be home by six o’clock at the very latest tonight,’ she’d reminded me that morning. ‘No later!’
It was six o’clock when the call came from the police station on Rose Street, asking her to come and collect her daughter, who’d been arrested.
They’d marched us along to the station, a policeman in front and another behind, then placed us in a cell to await our parents. It was cold and bare and terrifying.
We sat in silence in the car. She could tell I was suffering, and I think she realised it had been a lot for me. Don’t get me wrong, I was grounded and didn’t get any pocket money for a good while, but ultimately, she was pretty gentle with my punishment. I was a good kid, and this situation was out of the norm.
Though the timing of it was mortifying for her!
I had to wait three long months before I found out the consequences of my actions at the police station. There was purposefully only one chair in the room. As I stood next to my mother, the policeman sternly outlined my crime and informed me that I now had a criminal record that would stay with me until I was 16 years of age. Also, that every shop on Princes Street had been provided with a photo of me.
The nightmare was over. Though I felt the need to avoid Princes Street for a very long time, I had a good story to tell. Don’t you think?
If you were a host, would you be more or less likely to offer me a residency if I answered ‘Have you ever been convicted of a crime?’ with ‘I got caught shoplifting at the age of 12 and had a criminal record until I was 16, but I regret it and have been a good girl ever since!’
Wouldn’t you prefer someone’s humour to come through in an application? Would it make you feel that you could trust them more? That they were telling you the truth!
What can we do if people withhold crucial information from us, though? How can we strive to provide them with a fabulous experience if we don’t know about their syndromes?
Why would she choose not to tell us about her mosquito allergy when directly asked about allergies? I can’t begin to comprehend it.
I can honestly say, in hindsight, that I think they did a fabulous job on me back then, and I can only wish that they had the resources these days to take the time to scare the bejesus out of all little kids that commit minor crimes like they did to me.
As I said, they really did a number on me, and I’ve never committed a single crime since… oh, apart from paying half on the bus for two years longer than I was supposed to.
That day came to a sad end when I was 17 though and the bus driver looked me up and down and exclaimed,
‘Half? You must have had a hard life!’
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Find me at www.juliadouglas.co.uk
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