Advertisement
Banksy first came to our house over a decade ago. Our thatched cottage was in a small village in a small county somewhere in England. It was also completely hidden from the road and had no neighbors. While this made the long, dark, winter nights especially un-relaxing, it was the ideal location for a world-famous, anonymous creative mastermind.It was June, I think. We'd just put the house on the market and that weekend were conducting an agent-free open weekend because we were bohemian like that. We'd set everything up to attract the right sort of buyer: the floors were cleaned, we'd put flowers everywhere, the chickens were out roaming free range all over the lawn, the rats were in the chicken run, rolling eggs out of the hen house with their little ratty hands, and the sheep were leaning deadpan against the gate, presumably waiting for lunch or some sort of absolution.Read: These Stunning Photos of New Zealand's Largest Gang Will Give You Sleepless Nights
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
That was the last time we saw the Banksys.About four years later, my mom got a phone call from a man at a Sunday newspaper. Unsurprisingly, said paper has a crack team of reporters whose job it is to unmask the guy, which is merely proof, if proof were needed, that NCTJs are bullshit. The guy quizzed my mum on the phone for about 20 minutes, patronizing the hell out of her, asking her to "pop on Google" and "have a peep at the picture of [------]" before explaining that the facts had led him to believe the man was Banksy, which he backed up pretty effectively with a series of un-quashable facts.Luckily, what my mum lacks in animal welfare she makes up for in nous and she told him very little. Instead, she put the phone down and wrote a letter to Mrs. Banksy who was, as she wrote back, pretty grateful. Then my mom rang the farmer up the road who used to help with the sheep, and occasionally slaughter a lamb when things were tight at Casa del B, who said they knew all along who he was. Because he, like four out of five people in the local area, had an inexplicable urge to protect the guy. The next thing we knew, Mr. and Mrs. Banksy had vanished. I say the last bit like I was privy to it, but the truth is, my mom didn't tell me for months because I was a journalist and there is evidently no trust like that betwixt a mother and her youngest child.It is, of course, very unfortunate for the Banksys that they supposedly bought the house of a woman whose daughter was a journalist. But because I didn't work for a right-wing organization, it's only now, years later, with the Banksys long gone, that I've written about it. Imagine sitting on that secret! Not that I did, mind—that shit's social dynamite. Still, now that he's safely ensconced in a new place, I'm selling him out, mainly because I wish we hadn't left the sheep.Follow Morwenna on Twitter.Mr. Banksy wasn't remarkable, except that he was tall and wearing so much black it made your eyes yawn. He also had a baseball cap pulled down low over his face.