A sight to behold

A few weeks ago (Monday of the week of the riots) I had the best adventure I have had in a long time! My friend Mara sent me a text to tell me that there was a sofa on top of a bus stop on Mansfield road, and I almost fell off my chair! I immediately grabbed my coat and camera, and left the house on the hunt for a sofa related spectacle. En route I saw this dining room delight:

I didn’t believe that it would still be there, and I didn’t know whereabouts on Mansfield Road it was located. I briskly walked towards town eyeing up every single bus stop, excited at what I might see. I was getting closer and closer to town and thought my luck was running out, when I saw a rectangle silhouette on top of a bus stop and I almost jumped with joy! I turned around to tell someone ‘Look, look it’s a sofa on a bus stop, this is very rare indeed.’ but no-one was there. Mansfield Road is reknowned for odd characters, and I was fitting in just fine.

Perfectly placed council poster! I agree that putting a sofa on a bus stop is ambitious.

I crossed the road excitedly to make sure I saw it from all angles.

I walked home with the biggest smile on my face and an exhausted battery on my camera.

 

Every Chair

I have a lot of chair love and nothing makes me happier than discovering other people who love them too! I was looking at the website 20×200 where you can buy Artists prints (as you do on a Sunday evening when you’re trying to hold on tightly to the weekend) when I happened across the work of Luke Strosnider. It is called Every Chair At the Visual Studies Workshop and it’s absolutely wonderful! I was sad that it had sold out but was so pleased to have seen it at all. This is the first chair of the collection:

Chair 001

You can view all of the chairs in the project on Flickr and they are truly fascinating. There are such great contrasts between each chair and even the ones that are seemingly the same, have very subtle differences that make them unique. I have not seen a piece of art that has made me this happy for a while and as someone that helplessly personifies chairs, it was a pleasure to see portraits of so many characters!

A chair at Summer Sundae

Last year I went to Summer Sundae and it was amazingly good fun! It was Gemma, Al and I (three go camping) and on the first morning when we woke up there was a commotion. People had broken into the festival overnight using a chair, which they had then abandoned and a crate. For a spotter of discarded furniture, who specialises in chairs, this was extremely exciting!! I got my paparazzi brain in gear and started snapping.

Uh oh, a chair and crate, but why?

Sentenced to removal by security

As I am getting myself ready to go to Summer Sundae again this year (Eeeek!), I thought I would share the photos. I suspect, as there are new rules about allocation of booze, that people might well be hatching plans to smuggle in more alcohol. If you hear a bump in the night, it might well be someone launching a box of wine over the fence!

 

Types of time

I was having a conversation this week about the different types of time and how it becomes increasingly more difficult to make time for everything. I have been musing over the different types I think there are all week and categorised them as follows:

There is obligatory fun celebratory time, Weddings, Birthdays, leaving parties. There is fun time ‘just because’ which often happens without too much planning, like a trip to the pub on a Friday night. There are breaks away and adventures, camping, festivals, holidays. There are catch ups and chats, this usually involves drink or food as the centre point, pub, cafe or cups of tea on the sofa. There is inbetween time, usually on the way somewhere, to the shop, to work, on the train. Necessary time, work, life admin and sleeping. Relaxation time, watching TV, cooking, reading, sitting, going for a walk. There is also development time (couldn’t think of a better word for it!), learning, thinking, making art, trying something new. This list is not exhaustive and obviously everyone is different, but for me at this point in time these are the main ways I spend/organise my time. On Thursday evening I spent my favourite type of time, the fun type!

Me, Amy, Haydn and Al drove to a pub near the river Trent which was super lovely as one minute I was sat on the sofa watching one of the many terrible programmes I watch and the next thing I knew I was going for a drive. It was so good to get out into the countryside; there were beautiful reflections in the water and a very nice looking bird.