LONG LIVE THE SHED

Greetings once again from Rex.

Thank you for visiting/revisiting. It's been a while and I suppose apathy and distraction have torn my attention from this blog to such things as cricket, children moving schools, and work. None of these things are capable of stopping the creative flow. They actually are or can become the conduit for one's creativity to blossom.

And so, inevitably, to the issue of the hitherto unseen new shed.

Here is a summary of comments elicited from those who have laid eyes upon the shed's unique form and astonishingly intricate and thoroughly appropriate design. The content of these statements is subject to possible digressions from the original due to time induced recall lapse.

I have also changed or omitted names to protect the innocent/guilty.

"...I was talking to a friend who built a shed from a patchwork of different bits of wood. I had envisaged something like that, but this is something really different." remarked friend and neighbour Ozwald Guillimot.

Socialite stalwarts the Ming-Bunters, who were over for the annual Art and Mindbend Soiree, were moved to point out the conflict between it's use as either leisure or practical space. However, lover and Director of Weekend Entertainment Doris Blotch had this to say " That's nice dear, what is it?"

To some, it seems, my work has become inappreciable.

During the many hours of labour, though it was not the hottest of summers, teabreaks were a-plenty. Pictured here is the scene of one of those many pauses for refreshment. To the right can be seen the cunning use of internal doors as a large window. Sheds can be such dauntiingly dark places, and I decided to make mine quite the reverse. It helps when looking for those screws/nails/little bits of stuff which ping off into the otherwise dingier recesses during the process of junk shifting I call D.I.Y.

Here is a brief pictorial summary of the type of chaos I seem to prefer to work by whilst constructing anything bigger or more complex than a cheese sandwich. Surely, I hear you cry, somebody as reluctant to employ the necessary organisational skills or regard to health and safety regimes usually attributed to adult humans should never be allowed to purchase let alone use power tools such as the one depicted.

It's a free-ish country however, people can keep caged birds, cycle without helmets, drink strong coffee etc. So I figure I can tempt fate with a speedily rotating saw blade which would have ones digits reduced to mere bloody stumps within a split second.

And as those heady days back in 2008 rolled on, and the cricket season in it's politeness gave way to another brash and noisy bunch of overpaid oiks in football kits, the ediface began slowly to take shape.

Recycling all I could gather in my locale, the greatest aquisition I believe was the 4' square kitchen window. Whole, unbroken, in full working order and fully waterproof. It weighed quite a bit, so controlling the skateboard upon which I chose to transport it was tricky at first.

But control it I did and after several months of sitting under a tarp in the garden, the installation was a success and it looked like this. Note the flowering fennel in front of it, attracting as it does a variety of hoverflies and their nectar-guzzling cousins

Artists impression of what transporting windows on a skatebord could have looked liked to an innocent bystander.

Here I can show you the interior doors that were in the best condition put to use as the comely face of the shed. It faces the house this way and I wash up looking straight at it. Washing up needs a decent view if possible. I'll allow you to make your own judgements, but I can stomach looking at this for 10 minutes at a stretch.

And here is one of those arty-farty oblique sort of views.

You may note that the tree in the background looks bare and yet this was reportedly the end of summer. Well, it's down to the ravenous nature of sawfly lavae. Those little bastards stripped every single piece of greenery from next door's spunky smelling tree inside two weeks of spring, reducing it to the skeletal form which it holds to this day.

A couple of years after completion, in the spirit of Alan Titchmarsh and the Ground Force team but without the smarm or wobbley boobs, I am proud to revisit the scene where architecture meets a junk yard. It is a unique construction, and is a place of solace and solitude without which I would get rained on, and so would quite a few of my rag-tag possessions.

Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to that most characterful of garden dwellers,

THE SHED.