At Home With: Wallis Bird

Wallis Bird not only describes her current abode as “the best house in the universe”, but it’s right beside Brailsford Park in London’s Brixton, and so, she adds, “the park is her garden.”

In fact the park played a role in her finding this house. As she explains, “Myself and my friend Aoife O’Sullivan from the band were living in a flat nearby. We were walking through the park and saw these wonderful houses and joked about buying them. In fact, we were looking to buy bikes at the time, and there were bikes parked outside this one house. We also noticed it had a to-let sign, and as soon as we saw the apartment we just had to move in. We absolutely love it. I can’t think of a single thing I dislike about the house or the people or the area.”
The house is on a quiet street only 10 minutes walk from the Victoria Line tube, which takes you into central London in another ten minutes, although Wallis often prefers to walk into the centre anyway. It’s divided into three storeys, and the Birdwoman of Brixton lives on the middle floor. One of the attractions of this particular house, in which she’s resided for just over a year, is the sense of communality she gets from the people around her.
“Brixton is very community-focused,” she says. “There are markets around the area and it’s such a cool part of town. We never lock our doors. We reckon that we haven’t really much that’s worth stealing anyway, and if the thieves want to get in they’ll get in, so why bother? But it’s really the people who do it for us. There are all sorts of terrific people coming and going and there’s a fantastic spirit of community among us all. We babysit for the other people in the house, and we love sitting around talking to whoever drops by. If I want to take time to maybe work on a song or something I just put a note on the door and everybody respects that. But there’s always some activity going on. It’s a very vibey house, especially with the people who drop in, which includes a lot of muso heads, spiritual people and artists.”
One of the people who regularly drop by is the Bristol graffiti artist Banksy, who should feel at home given the décor in the house. “Everybody who comes here is encouraged to write something on the wall. Some people might just write their name, or might just one word like 'bubble', 'hands', 'sleep', 'touch', 'music', 'love' – whatever comes into their head really, even when they’re drunk! Some write song lyrics, and somebody’s written, ‘What we are never changes, but who we are is always changing,’ and, ‘When you lose small minds you free your life’. All sorts of stuff really.”
The walls are also adorned with leaves. “We get leaves from the local trees and we dry them out and put them on the walls as decorations. We also use the acorns we find. It all gives out a sense of the earth and mother nature that we want to have in the house. I suppose you could say it’s a kind of a hippy-style house.”
There’s a stool too which is likely to attract your attention. “The stool was made for us by one of the guys downstairs because there was little furniture in the apartment to start with. Since we got it, people have drawn things on the stool and used it to play word games, so it fits in well with the writing on the wall.”
Eschewing the distractions of owning a TV set, Wallis prefers the local radio stations, especially Urban Groove and Resonance FM. “They play great music, the most random you could imagine. You never know what you’re going to hear next. They could be giving out cookery recipes for ten minutes and then you get a recitation of some poetry and then it could be Bob Marley, Billie Holiday or mad tribal music or Indian music or classical and then they might play a recording of a lawnmower cutting grass!”
Nor does the apparently non-materialistic Bird have a record collection. “We gave away all our CDs, so we’ve fuck-all of a record collection. Our music listening tends to be via iPods and lap-tops. The iPod has a lot of tracks by Fela Kuti, Nina Simone, Cathy Davey and Bob Marley, that kind of stuff.”
Visitors to Bird’s abode will probably notice the smell of a fire burning in the apartment on the floor below, and you might also get the enticing smell of lentils cooking. “Nearly everybody here cooks really good spicy food and we use some Jamaican recipes, and you get the fresh smell of the park wafting in as well.” Hmmm. That could be the smell of grass alright.
She’s not averse to DIY either. “We’ve actually put up some shelves ourselves and made some tables, and we’ve fixed up old furniture we found thrown out on the street. We paint them and turn them into works of art.”
But supposing she had to leave this place, is there an individual item she’d want to keep with her always? “It’d have to be either the stool our friend made for us, or the wall. The wall is really important for all the memories the writing has of the friends we made here. I’d have to move it brick by brick!”
Fortunately, with her music career very much in the ascendant, the writing won’t be on the wall for Wallis Bird anytime in the foreseeable future.