It’s a little odd to be asked to celebrate your own birthday. Odder still, when it’s not quite yours to celebrate. This year marks 50 since the Goldmark Gallery, in one form or another, has been trading. And although I have known the gallery all my living memory, I’m not sure I was even two years old when I first met its founder and my stepfather, Mike Goldmark. I am told we sized each other up and decided we would get along fine. He has been a best friend, teacher, and confidant ever since – and for the last eight years, my employer.
On our first meeting in the early ‘90s, Mike was then living on the top floor of the gallery, where I would later retire after school and watch Star Wars on repeat. These were the good old days when Mike went barefoot, dressed only in black t-shirts and tracksuit bottoms, to his punters’ bemusement. He had arrived in Uppingham, the smallest town in the smallest county in England, in the early 1970s, having played his part in the rise of the Kipper tie in Swinging Sixties London. Previous jobs on the shop floors of Marks & Spencer, or going door-to-door selling double glazing and dog food, taught him two essentials: the importance of putting your name above the door, on which to stake your reputation, and the beauty of a great sales pitch (a favourite with well-to-do dog-owning ladies involved taking out a tin and spoon and consuming its contents as proof of quality).
