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issue 1 june 2004

“it seems like a doll’s house, thinking back,” he says, “the ceilings were so low. it was quite sweet. it wasn’t in a desolate wasteland full of junkies or anything. i go back quite a bit now and spend more time there than i have for years. for a while i just couldn’t go back, because i’d only recently escaped. i don’t really have friends there, i only really see the people who came with me. i hate to think of friendship as a memory, you know – you remember being friends with people but you don’t actually enjoy their company. do you know what i mean?”

his sister blandine was always a friend. she was named after liszt’s daughter (“my father is complete obsessed with liszt,” says anderson). four years older than her brother, she is inordinately proud of him. a ceramic artist (“you couldn’t really call her a potter, as she doesn’t make pots”), she too has escaped, and now lives in devon.

“it was a tiny life,” anderson says. “hanging around 7-11s, you know, rural aimless youth. there was nowhere to go, absolutely nowhere. there was a lot of sitting around in parks, alienating yourself, deliberately. there was one place, a playground, where we used to go and take drugs. it was full of grannies and their grandchildren, and we used to go there and just kind of revel in the fact there we were so out of place. that was the interesting side of it. there is just nothing to do in those kinds of places.