Humans Of Northampton

"It's my second year at University. I was going to go to Coventry and then I went for the interview and thought, 'You know what, I like it here more, it feels more homely.' Coming from a small town near Bristol it feels a bit like home, like a little bit of an upgrade but not like a massive city like Coventry."

"Your project, it's about Northampton?"

"It's a way for students to see how Northampton is changing. It's crazy how much is going to be built, it's really interesting to see. The council have given us permission to go into different sites to take photos of the building as it's changing. It shows you how some buildings are being re-contextualised. A bomb-proofed sorting office being turned into a school. You could see where the posters sat for years, they were taking everything out and gutting the whole building, and you can see how big the school is going to be just from that shell they've made that we were allowed to go into.  It's three years running now, we're the third class to do it. It will continue after us, Northampton's not going to stop growing. There's a gallery space that we have at Avenue campus, 23rd Feb - 3rd March. That will just be work from our year. There's also a Facebook page and a website."

"I'm actually from the Isle of Man. My husband was an architect but on the Isle of Man there wasn't that much for him to do, so he got a job in Northampton. I was just thinking this morning, strangely enough, I really ought to go back. I've got some relatives there who are getting quite elderly now. A bit like me! I don't think I'd want to live there again, if you ever need to go to hospital they ...put you on a boat to Liverpool."

"If you made a trip to the Isle of Man is there anything in particular you'd have to see when you got there?"

"My family are coming around on Christmas day. I haven't actually had the time to buy anything so it's been a rush for me. Today I'm just going to find anything I can to get them for Christmas. My family will be grateful for anything I get them, but that's not an excuse to not get anything good, you know what I mean?"

"What do you like about Christmas?"

"The main reason, celebrating the birth of Christ. I'm a Christian, that's everything to me. We don't actually know when Jesus was born, it's all speculation, but to celebrate the idea, the concept, the philosophy of it and what that means for all of humanity, I think that's quite powerful. That's my belief."

"Is that maybe why your family aren't so worried about what you give them, because there's more to it in their eyes?"

"Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it!"

"So what are you most looking forward to at Christmas?"

"I'm waiting for my Mum and sister to pick me up. They've just been to the hospital and found out that my sister's baby has stopped growing at 34 weeks. We're going to go and have a talk about what that might mean. My sister's quite worried. Not great news to have on Christmas eve-eve. But hopefully she's fine. Hopefully this is the last piece of bad news between now and New Year. I've had one of those years. I said this last year, 'next year will be better.' Next year was not better!

I've just dropped out of a genetics degree at UCL because I realised that science isn't what I want to do. I want to write and I want to do art. It's quite tricky sometimes to justify yourself to people; I've just left uni and everyone's like, 'what are you doing? You've dropped out of one of the hardest degrees to get into in the country and you're coming to work in a bookshop?!' I just had this sudden epiphany of, maybe life's way too short to spend it in a lab if you don't want to do all this test tube stuff?"

"So next year you'll have time to write?"

"I'm looking at going back next year to study arts and sciences at uni. You can study cultures so you can do things like fine art, philosophy, English, archaeology. We'll see. I'm trying not to stress. I'm one of those people that always stresses about what's around the corner but then things like this happen, the things you should be worrying about are never the things you think you should be worrying about. It's just things that come from leftfield."

"What things do you think you'll write about?"

"I really don't know. I'm autistic and people say to me, 'you should write about autism because you're doing science and you want to be a writer'. I was quite late being diagnosed but my family when I told them kind of said, 'yeah we always knew. We saw that you were struggling' and I was like, 'why didn't you tell me in all that time?!'

No-one ever picked up on it because I always did good at school, always got top grades, went to uni and I was a year ahead of everyone, a year younger. I just blazed through it. But then I got there and thought, 'oh shit. I actually hate this. I hate school.'

"I like beer. I'm a beer nerd. I like all the craft beers from the microbreweries, I like the independent business aspect of a lot of them and wanted to try and get into that kind of thing myself, being 'self-made' I guess. It means I can work at my own pace, I can work in my own way... And it's very much a local business for local people.

With the local breweries I've got to know a few of the staff there, talk to them, have a couple of local brewers do 'meet the brewer' events and come and talk about their products. It's called craft beer because there's more of a craft to making it rather than the mass produced stuff where it's all just very formulaic."

"Can you tell me about the two beers you've got there?"

"Phipps is made on Bridge Street, the Albion brewery. They've recently reopened. The Toasted Porter is from Iceland, it's very popular, we sold out after the first couple of days when we opened."

"How did you find it?"

"I'm 67, I've never had cold, flu, illnesses, pain or anything like that. I've been very fortunate. I think my mum had lots of vitamins when she carried me, but I think it's Jesus' love that's kept me in good health. I've been a Christian since I was 15. Since 1976 I've been part of the Jesus Army and I've been very glad to be part of it for the devotion, the comradeship, the dedication and the way they carry out the scriptures. I was living with my sister in Great Yarmouth and this brother came from Coventry to do a working holiday, he made friends with my sister and myself. He told me about the Jesus Army in '73, in '76 I came up to see them and I was so impressed I just longed to live with them.

The longest job I done was baking, in a bakery that was 300 years old. That was in Braunston. I worked there for 15 years but we had to sell because we couldn't compete with the supermarkets. I worked through the night or from 3 o'clock in the morning. I've had a variety of jobs, I started with crop recording at Fisons fertilisers. I've done gardening, farming, emptying slurry, cleaning, but my worst job was grave digging up near Mereway. I regretted taking it on, I had to work in all conditions, snow, rain. It was really tiring.

My sister lives in Jerusalem. My brother lives in Southend. I also had a twin, he died when we were 61. I wasn't close to him. He was two and a half inches taller than me, he was blond, he had blue eyes and mine are brown. He was the brains and I was the brawn. We were right opposites. The only likeness is we both had an extra finger!

I've got a gift of encouragement and I like encouraging people. I don't live on the streets but I only sleep about 3 hours; I sit in the streets and talk to those who do."

"I'm a company director. We retail juices and smoothies, we have two juice and smoothie bars, one in Luton and one in Reading. Home is Northampton so that's why the office is here. We're doing well. I used to work for a bank, for seven years. Was doing alright but just always wanted to open my own thing. Had an opportunity and jumped at it, I've been doing it for about eight years. I'd like to grow, expand around the country really. London is a hopeful, we may have an opportunity next year. I'm just negotiating that." "What's the name?" "It's called Vibe Juice." "Is there any reason you're not selling in Northampton?" "We wouldn't mind, but there's a bar already in the Grosvenor owned by a friend of mine so I don't want to step on his feet really!"

"Where did you get that hat?" "I picked it up on a market in Camden Town. I love it down there, it's great. This town's a bit stale compared to it, London's so broad. If you run out of things to do you just get on the tube... Five minutes and you're somewhere else completely." "Do you have any other favourite spots down there?" "Yeah, I like Brick Lane, Petticoat Lane, I like it all around there. I like Bethnal Green and stuff, I think that's pretty cool. Shoredich." "Is there any part of Northampton that does it for you in the same way?" "We've got some good shops for vintage clothing and stuff like that. There's some cool, quirky stuff that you wouldn't find everywhere, like we're just heading off up to Most Marvellous. I go to the Lamplighter, my band's got a gig there by the way. We're called The Barratts. Like the factory!"

"I've nearly finished. I'm just tidying bits up."

"How long has it taken to restore the shop front in total?"

"What's the name of your band?" "The Young and Restless." "Are you young and restless?" "He's the oldest one..." "Yeah, they're young and I'm restless!" "So if I was going to check your music out what would be the best song to listen to first?" "Afterparty, or Leave Us To Our Own Devices."