Synopsis

Based on the memoirs of Arthur "Freddy" Palmer, Terry Flaxton’s docu-fiction examines the potentials and the flaws of autobiography as a form of history through a syncopated double narrative – that of Palmer and that of his great-great granddaughter, who compares the 1980s London she lives in compared to that of her ancestor's 19th-century one. We begin in an attic, as the young woman sifts through her grandmother’s belongings, which she remarks are "the only evidence of a life’s work".

At a desk, she begins to read Freddy's letters and diaries, before venturing into the City to explore the old haunts of his youth with a polaroid camera in hand, wandering around London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Cheapside, St. Pauls and all the spots where he first worked delivering shipping mercantile paper. The narratives switch between the young woman’s own voiceover about her life –– her break-up, her eviction, her daughter –– against Freddy’s: he worked as a sailor, got married and divorced, lost two children early on, before taking his two daughters to America.

Then, the young woman’s grandmother joins her in the attic, and elucidates that Freddy is only telling one side of the story, as she interjects with her own, describing how her mother ran away from Freddy in America to live with her mother in England. The final shot ends on a black-and-white staged photo of a woman burning her own diaries.