A Child of the Jago

A child of the Jago, Holborn



My mother is a self-confessed hoarder and I’m pretty certain she’s given me the deadly gene too.

Growing up in a house full of nit-bits, with rosettes from my mother’s horse riding days hung proudly in the hallway, my great grandfather’s army cap on display in the living room and more frameless mirrors and dusty hard back books than our modest four-bed could really house, family trips usually involved visits to antique auctions and craft fairs to source items for “That piece of wall by the bathroom”. I’m sure it was when my mother found E-bay to fuel her guilty pleasure that my father filed for divorce.
A child of the Jago, modestly situated in the trendy quarters of Shoreditch, would be (and will be) a favourite haunt of my mother’s and any other past-decade-memorabilia-enthusiast’s.
Searching through the items for purchase, like I did as a child at Scout jumble-sales, feels like trawling through a treasure chest full of archived antiques or rummaging through forgotten items in a bohemian’s attic.

Every item evoking a sudden case of day-dreaming.

I start thinking about that empty corner of my new-Northern-Line-flat’s living room and it’s invaded with my mother and father arguing, “One person’s junk is another person’s treasure” my mother repeats, a fitting ethos for A Child of the Jago.