Alex Hutchinson

@alexthearchivist.com

1892 Followers 627 Following

Chocolate historian, author, broadcaster, archivist. Formerly the archivist at Nestle.co.uk, but now archiving at YorkshireTea.co.uk Published: HarperCollins.co.uk Rep'd: knightayton.co.uk Trustee: yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk Or: alexthearchivist.com

A three foot live fir tree (or is it a spruce?) which I got in a pot in Lidl at the end of November 2024. In the icy cold of my living room the tree has thrived. I've taken down the Christmas decorations, but left up a string of warm white lights. It is sitting on a box in front of a set of bookshelves which are home to the complete works of Charles Dickens, whose writing I love, but whose life I despair of.
A barrel of KP Cheese Footballs photographed in front of a real Christmas tree decorated with plumb coloured strings of beads, lights, and a a string of oak leaves. In the top corner of the photo is a glimpse of some hardback Dickens novels on a bookshelf. I bet Dickens would have loved Cheese Footballs. They really are the meaning of Christmas.
A photo taken outdoors on a winter day on a large paved driveway. It appears at first to be a Christmas selection pack of chocolate bars in a plastic, stocking-shaped net, with a purple card tag at the top displaying the use-by date and a cartoon illustration of Santa. However, when you zoom into the image you realise all the chocolate bars (there are twelve of them) have heads and feet. You are in fact looking at a dozen grown men who have created chocolate wrapper dresses to go over their clothes, sporting the exact brand logos of the most popular Cadbury bars. The men are lying on the ground with their legs together and arms by their sides in a Christmas stocking-shaped formation and someone has covered them with a big fishing net and added a giant card tag. This is astonishing. The work that went into this! I'm in awe! Someone, somewhere deserves an A Level in at at minimum. Possibly the Turner Prize. Something has gone wrong with the scrolling on the alt text box (it always does) so I can't scroll up to proof read. I hope I don't have any whopping typos.
A photograph taken at the corner of Petergate in the city of York in 2015. A man gives out home-made flyers from a lectern on wheels which is covered in homemade banners which read, "ALMOST THERE NOW", "OBEY GOD IF YOU WANT TO LIVE", "THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO THE END OF THE WORLD", "ALMOST THERE NOW". When I took this photo I was rather smug about not believing any of it, but the following year was the rapture in which David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and Victoria Wood were all taken from us. Trump was elected president, then we had BoJo in No. 10, a worldwide pandemic, the sea caught fire... It just never ends, does it? I thought the apocalypse would be quick, but this is awful. Have you seen the price of arabica coffee? And don't even get me started on petrol! How am I supposed to ignite my giant wicker offerings to the Elder Gods if I can't get hold of a jerry can of four star? The favour of the deities isn't going to be bestowed on those who use unleaded, is it? The whole thing's just a nightmare if you ask me. And whatever you do, don't touch bread if it's moist; you can thank me for that one later.
A photograph of a Roman roof tile with four little dog paw prints pressed into the terracotta before firing, alongside the stamp of the VIth legion. The roof tile is in a glass display case with (as I had remembered it) a red background. However, the tile itself is utterly different to the one I remembered and I realise I've seen a black and white photo somewhere of another tile and two amphora which were damaged but glued back together. Now where did *those* go?!
A page from a paperback novel reads: 'She had run heedlessly through the ice and frozen mud, skidding dangerously and often, until she reached the police sub-station at the Burnley road junction just minutes away. 'The satellite station had been closed when she arrived, and above the door of the squat little Edwardian building was a warning carved in stone in a language she didn't speak: ignorantia legis excusat neminem, ignorance of the law excuses no-one.' This was from the first novel I ever had published. I think it was from an event which was happening in flashback but I've got no idea, really. I wrote the whole thing myself -- no ghostwriters or anything -- which is why it's such a mad chaos of implausible things held together by a misunderstanding of basic physics and local geography.
An Edwardian colour postcard of a cartoon showing a woman in a white blouse, red skirt, and red hat. She is standing on a pavement where she was evidently going about her business quite peacefully until she had to turn around and beat back a bird with her red folded up umbrella. The bird is a large stork, and it has a sling of blue fabric around it's neck which holds a wriggling, naked baby. The stork is trying to deliver the baby to the woman and the woman is beating the stork with her umbrella (but missing the baby who is fine). The line of text at the bottom of the postcard reads, "AND THE VILLAIN STILL PURSUES HER."
A painting by Johannes Vermeer (painted around 1665) entitled, 'Girl wth a pearl earring'. The girl in question is wearing an oversized ochre silk garment around her shoulders with a brilliant white collar poking out at the top. Her hair is concealed by a turban of sky blue fabric wrapped around her hairline, with a knot of cream fabric at her crown which cascades from there down the back of her neck. Her expression is almost a smile, but not quite. Her mouth is open and her bottom lip appears lightly moist. She looks out of the painting over her left shoulder. The eye of the viewer is drawn to her left earlobe where a large teardrop-shaped pearl gleams, caught by a little daylight. I remember the moment in the 2003 film of the same name where this image was recreated by Scarlett Johansson. I saw it in the cinema that year, and I heard fellow audience members gasp at the sight. I was an undergraduate at the time and I remember my fellow students writing endless short stories inspired by the Tracy Chevalier book on which the film was based. It seemed to grip everyone, like the fever of the 90s when everyone was raving about Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I wonder what my students would think of these books now. Or the painting for that matter. In a world burning beneath climate change, polluted by post-truth political movements, do the works of the old masters have anything to say to Generation Alpha?
Me, aged two and a half, wearing a tweed coat with a black velvet collar (where in god's name did I get that?!) looking into the window of Lewis's department store in Glasgow, while my Grandma Mary looks at me. In the window is a display of Tiny Tears dolls having a tea party at a big table laid out with tea cups, food, and wrapped gifts. The dolls are holding balloons and clambering over the table. My grandma was desperate to buy me a tiny tears doll for Christmas that year, but I only wanted A-Team action figurines because I was so obsessed with the A-Team I would only answer to the name of Mr T. That year Lewis's also had a window full of animatronic dogs.
The window of an abandoned bookshop where a book has slipped off it's stand and everything has faded.
A glass fermentation crock with layers of shredded cabbage.