On this day, we met a Librarian called Richard, who stored recorded voices of people, telling their encounters within the King's Cross area in Holborn Library. People telling their stories and talking about the 1940's onwards. Some were funny and had songs in them but others were quite tragic and sad, drawing on personal experiences within the area, expressing what they had to do to 'get by' and their childhoods. From all these recordings i was able to hear the history and even feel like i was in the same room as them, listening. Looking at their wide range of recordings, and the time and care spent in collecting them was fascinating - its sad that Richard will be leaving.
Our task was to re-in act what Richard had spent years doing, and interview people around the spaces we would be going to and talk to them, letting them tell us about their experiences. After this, we met an oral historian, Alan Dein, a broadcaster, who first took us to Coram's fields, which was a playground for children aged 12 or 14 and below and no parent could enter unless they had a child with them, this was strange to me, but was a good idea because children were kept safe and also could interact with children their own ages, just having fun! *=]... "Oh to be young again..."* It was kind of sad, just standing at the gates, peering in, wishing time could go back *hehehehe*. Having Antony amongst us, who also went to the playground as a kid, being a local in the area, we thought we should interview him and let him tell us about his childhood.
Listening to him reminiscing about the area and how much he enjoyed 'playtime', there was a correlation to what he said and what others, that were in the 60's, had said. After this, we went to 'The Boot' which was a pub, just off of Cromer Street, and walking into the place, you could definately see the history of it, the motif of boot ornaments that filled the shelves and the people seemed so nice, especially the Irish bartender who told us stories, at first being reluctant to be personal, but then feeling comfertable enough she explored some areas of her life in the area of King's Cross/Holborn - seeing a lot of things and meeting a variety of people, i particularly liked the Ghost story she told *=]... Did i get scared...? Nar, you must be joking! =P*.
Walking around King's Cross with a massive microphone and a tape recorder, was just too tempting not to mess around with - i think i may have annoyed the others *Ooops..* My favourite part of the day was talking to random people *Like i don't do that already =P* in King's Cross station, asking them what they thought about it, the area and where they were going, especially the little kid who did not seem to care much, but was really sweet. The couples, the person who was 'jamming' waiting for a Cab and listening to Prince, the people who just come to London for business, the person who could not speak much english, the people who just wanted a day out, people from France, Berlin all over were interviewed and i liked listening to what they had to say, the hardest part was asking the questions... Working with Alan Dein was great, he taught us a lot and also talked to us about other projects he has pioneered and the results he got from them, and how he uses that to progress, i thought was really interesting. I'd definitely do it again.
