We start as participants in a life drawing class, at desks or easels, doing our best under instruction. Then the subject begins to talk to us, looking back at her life from age 65, though her body is her younger self. She eventually invites us to follow her, which is where we board a bus with raked seating facing backwards and headphones to wear.
From here we drive around the South East London suburb of Eltham. She’s not on board, but we meet her at a number of locations – waste ground behind Eltham Football Club, the B&Q car park (!), a removal company’s yard and a secluded green – where she continues her reminiscences. It’s quite other-worldly, a feeling enhanced between stops as you watch passers-by with surprised and bewildered expressions watching you.
The prose is good and it’s a gentle, thoughtful experience, but for me it was a long schlep by two buses and two trains each way; an investment that I’m not sure was fully repaid. That said, Greenwich & Docklands International Festival continues to provide original experiences, for which they are to be applauded loudly.
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 