How We Live

Casciani Evans Wood was commissioned by the Now Festival to interview the people of Nottingham.

How We Live asks people about their experience of Nottingham and what their thoughts are on living and working in the city. The results of the interviews will appear as portraits and quotes at various venues around the city for the duration of the festival.

Casciani Evans Wood would like to thank everyone that has taken part in How We Live so far. If you would like more information or wish to take part, please email us at info@cascianievans.com

This project is a collaboration with photographer Fenella Mett.

Quotes...

Subject 1
I’ve never learnt to swim, so I’m doing that. It’s really good. Breast Stroke as well. I can’t do it yet but I’m actually trying to put real effort into that. That’s something I really, really enjoy. I normally go when everyone else has gone home so I can prat about without looking a fool. I’ve got this teacher and she’s very good and the first time I went, she asked me if I was afraid of water. This was only two weeks ago. I said, “Well, this is the first time I’ve been in water”. “Well,” she said, “what I need you to do is to go to the bottom of the pool”. I said, “You’re kidding?!” She said, “No. It’s alright, don’t worry. I’m here to pull you out”. So she sent me to the bottom of the pool and I came up very, very quickly. But now I do it regularly. I keep jumping in, holding myself down there and floating up.
Subject 2
Nottingham is relaxed. I like it. I’ve been in this trade since I was eighteen. It’s not what you call a proper job, is it?
Subject 3
I think this attitude of “You only live once, so f___ it” is destroying people. Go into a nightclub on a Saturday night at about 3am when everyone is kind of propped up against the bar and about to leave… just look around and look into peoples eyes and you see where people are at. They might have their Gucci suits on and they might have their bottles of champagne in front of them… their Rolex watches, but it is completely and totally meaningless. Because you see emptiness and shallowness in their eyes.
Subject 4
Sneinton people were “Sneinton” – we didn’t like strangers. When I met my husband I was 16. He was from Warsaw and he came to meet me. I took him down Sneinton and I thought they were gonna hit him. I told them, “Back off. He’s with me”. It’s like a stranger in the camp. It took a couple of years then they thought the world of him. They accepted him right up until he died – they all turned up at his funeral.
Subject 5
I want to move out when I have done Uni and all that. I will probably have had enough of Nottingham by then… go somewhere else when I’m a social worker. I want to go to Uni in Nottingham. I’ve got it all planned out.
Subject 6
I love photography and I used to work as a photographer but I haven’t touched a camera for over three years. It’s just time, isn’t it? And I’m not the type of person who takes snaps. If I were going to go out and do a bit I would need two or three days at a time.
Subject 7
We’d always heard about the Goose Fair but we never came to Nottingham before we got this place, so I think I’ll go next week and see what it’s all about.
Subject 8
I was quite amazed when I saw this place, I thought, “This is an underlay, not a carpet.” The Landlord said “Oh, no, no.” So later I was fantasising about shops, which are closed for general public but only open to landlords where they can buy this dirt-cheap stuff which would not be saleable in any other context.
Subject 9
People say Bridgeford, they say snobs. People say Clifton, they say how many kids you got?
Subject 10
The whole way to work the only bin there is is wheelie bins, so there is not a single public bin. You can’t throw anything away. It just seems wrong to not have a bin all that way. About three weeks after we moved in someone was beating up our wheelie bin with a cricket bat and shouting through somebody’s letterbox something like “She’s only sixteen”.
Subject 11
It’s fine in Sneinton. I say good morning to people, like when I’m passing old men sitting on walls. I ask them what they’re waiting for. There’s that bloke who’s always sitting on the wall. He stands with his foot up, very proud, looking like he owns the street. I like him. I remember saying to you when we came back, when it was starting to get all this money pumped in to it: Nottingham had a choice of going into a real dive because it was in a particularly bad place, but it was like it picked itself up, put on a smarter pair of shoes and went out dancing.
Subject 12
I’ve got this electrical bike. The hardest thing is not to pedal. You just open the throttle and it’s like a sewing machine. If you’re going up a hill you have to pedal, but when you are coming down you have to hang on as though deaths at the door because it weighs so much. I came down Orston hill into the village and I clocked 52 mile per hour and I thought “if anybody steps out we’ve all ‘ad it!”
Subject 13
If Nottingham is the older, cooler sibling, then Leicester is the young, gobby one. I don’t know what Derby is… probably the middle child, or maybe the analogy needs work.
Subject 14
I think that I’m lucky that I live here. I couldn’t live in the country. As much as you might think that it’s what you want it’s very difficult to do it. I know people who have moved out of the city for a quieter life and it hasn’t worked at all. They have been really lost and have really struggled with it.
Subject 15
I’d call it home after twenty odd years, I would never go back to Stafford. When the divorce went through my parents both wanted me to go back. I said ‘no’ because they always say don’t go back . . . never go back.
Subject 16
I mean the council, bless them, the council, as far as I can see, is populated with really nice people: very well motivated, very well intentioned but smothered under the weight of completely ineffectual bureaucracy. Nottingham is definitely home, but there’s that part of me that wants to move on which will always be there, because it keeps open in your mind room for change and I wouldn’t ever want to lose that.
Subject 17
People here are too strong I think. Some guy yesterday said to me “You know it is dangerous here, we are dangerous”. I said “Maybe, maybe, maybe…”
Subject 18
I’ve lived in an area where you notice the influx of students, and when they go away, it kind of dies, but you can then see who the real community is. You pick them out from every one else. I feel at home here but I don’t feel I can claim to be a Nottingham local; there are people around here who have lived here for generations and know so much about what the place was.
Subject 19
We moved to this house 5 years ago, before that we lived in Hyson Green, the side where the tram runs. I mean, the only reason we left there was the tram literally went right by the front door. We had Asian neighbours and they were brilliant, every time they had a wedding we were invited. I mean, my lads were all brought up down there, they still go down there, they don’t like it up here. I think its ‘cause they are more streetwise down there, I mean, they call Hyson Green but we never had any trouble and we was there for 18 years. Image depicts a grandfather and his grandson.
Subject 20
My grandmother used to feed me butter when I was younger because she knew I loved it so much. She was one of those old French grannys who thinks that whatever a child wants she should get. So she used to cut little chunks of butter and feed them to me.
Subject 21
If I moved back home to Tel Aviv I would really miss Ice Hockey. I’m a massive fan of the Nottingham Panthers. I used to hear my boyfriend talking about ice hockey and I thought, ‘I’ll never like it, it’s a stupid game’ but he said, ‘trust me - just come and watch one match and you’ll really really like it’. So we went to one match and at the end I was like, ‘Yeah I kinda like it, it’s ok’, after the second, ‘Yeah I like it’ and after the third, I started saying we instead of you about the team!
Subject 22
When it boils down to it, it suits me to live here because I wouldn’t want to live in a bed-sit. I’ve lived in too many bed-sits and hotels in my life. I interpret the boat the way I want.  I mean - I fell in love with it when I first bought it. Obviously I didn’t realise what was up with it, but I thought I’ll get stuck in and do it. The only thing that I was worried about was the engine and I’ve rebuilt that bugger.
Subject 23
We had already done our firing at the range and we had gone down to the bus for the change-over, we had a load of idiots on the other end of rifles blatting away for all they were worth when they shouldn’t have been. One of the rounds hit the metal framework of the bus and came careering down the inside. I was the fourth in-line. It hit my sergeant through the cheek of his arse, then hit the wall, then went through someone’s arm, then hit the framework again. You could see us all trying to jump out of the way, but of course, no one could move fast enough. All you could see was bodies all over the bus falling over with pain. No one died but the next thing I knew was I was falling over. It shattered me knee and it took me six months to recover -but I was unfit for the army after that.
Subject 24
I remember being told I was to go to Nottingham, so I went to the public library in France where I’m from and got a book about England, a tourist book which said, ‘Country of Robin Hood, of no interest’. It said ‘nice castle, but not worth a visit’.
Subject 25
I lived in Birmingham for two years, it was more livelier than here but it wasn’t a good thing ‘cos there was loads of crime and stuff. I’m glad I came back down here because I’ve started to write poems again. I write loads, I’ve written about 40 since I’ve been here. That’s a lot init. The Sleeping Angel Nine years ago you disappeared from our lives, so many complications made it hard for you to survive. You were an angel so lovely and petite, wearing a dress and little slippers on your feet. We held you in our arms as you peacefully slept and looked at your beautiful face as we softly wept. Everyday I wonder what you would have grown to be, would you be just like Mum or would you look like me. I pray god loves you in the heavens above, and one sweet day you will be reunited with us. Dedicated to my sister Shiraz (the sleeping angel), RIP.
Subject 26
I moved here about 12 years ago to study, it was fate which brought me to Nottingham. A group of ten of us undergraduates wrote to various places just after the Romanian Revolution, and out of all the places Nottingham replied. So the rest is history.

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