Free Seven Years with Banksy by Robert Clarke Page B

tomorrow to
what I was doing before.’
    ‘What was that?’ I asked.
    ‘Working in a slaughterhouse,’ he said.
    I tripped out on that. Who the fuck would go back to working in a slaughterhouse given half a chance? But it sounded true; I didn’t doubt it for a second. This comment cut me down and I
thought better of saying more. He was shaking his head. We came back to the room and the goings-on around us. It was the millennium’s eve. Party time. We looked at each other a little. I
smiled. It was good to see him at this juncture, at this impossible moment.
    ‘Yeah, see you,’ he said.
    ‘Happy New Year,’ I replied.
    ‘Yeah, right,’ he said, and then he was gone.
    I thought about what he had said for a bit and then the guests started to show and the proceedings began. And what a blast they were! My mum, who came down withone of my
Australian cousins, was a little nonplussed with the hard-core porn that shockingly came on the screen at midnight and I got magnums of champagne stuck in my face from all comers, but in tiny
corners of my brain I kept rerunning Robin’s appearance and what he said.
    Since the New Year I had seen Robin around and about and he began telling me about an event he was organizing in a central part of Bristol – an old dockside warehouse area that had been
trashed and was being developed (sadly) into nondescript offices and generic dwelling spaces in the twenty-first-century fashion. Anyway, for this to happen the developers had to run several
kilometres of high-board fencing round the site and that was obviously prime territory for erstwhile graffiti artists to develop their talents. However, Robin had a plan in place before the fencing
was even up, discussing with the council, under a pseudonym, the possibilities of an exceptional artistic event.
    For a couple of months after this he mentioned the project every time I saw him and I would listen, politely as always, to the next instalment of his unorthodox plans, and,
despite my doubts, as usual, it came together. The event was to be held on a spring weekend and boasted an array of international talent. Robin was excited about it and it had taken considerable
effort on his part to arrive at this point, not least his assuring a suspicious city council of the merit of this endeavour and that it would place the city on the map. I could imagine his boldness
in the council chambers despite the fact that the very same council was after him for years for criminal damage on account of his continuing artistic assault. You had to hand it to him, and his
impudence made me laugh. His escapades were endlessly entertaining.
    The event was to go on for the whole weekend, the artists arriving, setting up shop and finishing their pieces on theSunday. It was a fresh, breezy weekend and chilly to be
out for a whole day but that meant you could easily wear a hood if you didn’t want to be too visible without it seeming superficial.
    I had asked my mum if she wanted to go as I had mentioned Robin to her on several occasions by now. So we both went down quite early on the Saturday and the various artists had begun to set up.
There were local names, other Brits, Europeans and Americans who had flown in at Robin’s behest. He had that kind of reputation by now – movers in that world began to pay him respect
when he called.
    We found Robin and he was surprised to meet my mum, who rapidly produced a camera when he began to spray his work. He stopped to talk for some time, talking to my mother like a well-behaved and
polite English boy would, and she was very impressed. He didn’t like the camera but what can you say to someone’s mum?
    There began to be an easy party atmosphere as folks started to show and watch the art being created. It was intriguing to see all of these different writers putting up their
long-considered pieces. The quality was exceptional; it was clear for all to see and under normal circumstances you would never catch a