My poor old decorating shoes have finally climbed their last rung. Were they not to have started to chafe and twist my feet in recent months, causing footsore consternation in toe, arch and heel, we may have continued our long friendship, but lest I end my decorating career prematurely from injury, I must unlace these old stalwarts and send them on their way. But I could not let them go without documenting their vibrant pelts, enlivened from a half decade of Johnstone's Coverplus emulsion spottles.
And while the exposed toecaps gleam rudely in the early summer sun, their coverage stripped by the years (much like their owner's own sorrowful pate) there's a beauty to be found in the knowledge that this wear comes from countless hours of honest toil, the years of graft silently painting a unique design upon the tender blue skin of the soft leather uppers, as though the spirit of Pollock himself continues to daub from beyond the grave via my overoaded roller.
My/our Devo tribute @wearenotdevo are playing The Louisiana in Bristol on Friday and the O2 in Sheffield on Saturday. Come along, if you tick both the "I live in, or quite near to one of those cities" box, and the "I like the music of Devo, and would very much enjoy seeing a band perform their songs whilst dressed as and mimicking the physical attributes of the members of the band Devo" box. Hope to see you there!
Seventies pop fans! I'm stripping wallpaper this morning, and have found some amazing graffiti underneath - in amongst the "Liverpool for the '77 FA Cup" and "Bay City Rollers" scrawl, I found this: "The CB are the acest group around!" Does anyone know what pop group from 1976/77 it might be referring to - it's driving me mad trying to work out who it might be.
Slightly off, but better than expected self-portrait. Having stared at my face in the mirror for a full half an hour this afternoon, I'm no longer mystified as to why shop assistants stopped asking me for ID a few years ago. Note authentic thinning crown and resting bitch face details.
I found a big old pylon right in the middle of the woods near Woodhouse. I've never seen such a thing before (near Woodhouse or anywhere else, for that matter.)
They've got rid of all the graffiti on the footbridge over the railway tracks near Sheffield station, but they've chosen the precise shade of institutionalised green that somehow manages to make it even more oppressive than it was before. This photo really doesn't do the "let's see if we can get the entire job competed in quarter of an hour" finish justice either. If I was a naughty boy, I'd have jumped at the chance to apply the first new bit of graffiti to it.
I had a break yesterday from spending all my free time cutting frustratingly fiddly woodworking joints for no particular reason in order to actually build something. I used a fifty year old bit of sideboard we dismantled from my partner's mum's house in Birmingham to make nice little bird box for her to fit in her new garden in Sheffield (when she gets it). It's not particularly beautiful or complex, but I really enjoy repurposing old bits of wood, especially when they've got a bit of personal history. Btw, do any wood people have any idea what type of timber it is? It's a softwood of some description, but if it's pine then it's a hell of a lot harder than the stuff you buy these days. It's got a fifty year old dark stain on the bugger too, so that doesn't really help with the identification. Cheers!
Here's some more assorted joints. I may well stop posting them up, as, irrespective of the jaunty angles and feeble attempts at composition, essentially they're just pictures of scratty old bits of wood, and it's hard for anyone to get too excited about such things - even scratty old bits of wood enthusiasts would find these a bit underwhelming.
I've been feverishly cutting dovetails. Don't really know why - I've got some idea about wanting to be a 'proper' woodworker rather than being the 'hold the bugger together with screws' merchant that I currently am, but not really sure what I'm going to make once I've got this power at my disposal.
I'm a fair way off employing my new found skills in anything proper yet anyway - some of the gaps in these look like I cut the whole thing whilst blindfolded, using a blunt forty foot chisel, whilst stood in a workshop over the road from the bit of wood. Still, practice supposedly makes perfect.
Goodbye old friends. My Cofra safety trainers have finally gone to the great shoebox in the sky. You lived a long and fruitful life - it seems only yesterday you were newly adorning my feet, proud and cocky, with your ridged shelltoes gleaming like a scarab's shell. And while you eventually semi-retired into a decorator's shoe, then a gardener's shoe, and then eventually a putting the bins out shoe, I always felt prepared from heel to toe for whatever the world might have in store for me, safe in the knowledge that your aluminium toecaps were shielding my delicate footfingers from the chaotic unpredictability of the detritus littering the various ground-level substrates of our mother Earth. Farewell, my stylish Italian friends.
Curious to think that twenty five years on, the forty two year old me spends his spare time doing pretty much what the seventeen year old me did: scuttling off during any quiet moment to work on the pursuit of learning how to construct quality joints.
