I suddenly find that I am returning to the factory tomorrow for my last week of the project. The short notice was a result of the sudden end of a long saga concerning the making of various sets of doors. These are intended to fit seamlessly into the enamel landscapes without so much as a wobble in the plough lines and their creation has been tense and complicated. For my part I have left door sized cardboard patterns at Wells with aligned drawings waiting to be transferred across, let's hope everyone's read the 'Do not throw away!!!' messages.
Short notice when you have two jobs means a fast bit of juggling and the calling in of favours along the lines of the Godfather. Fortunately, like most women, I worked through my son's infancy so have had the practice. The difficult bit is the cake issue. This is the last visit, ergo I must give everybody cake on the Thursday before I leave. I've learnt enough about factory life to know that milestone events are marked in simple carbohydrate and I have no intention of disrupting the pattern. The only answer is to pack up a kit like I used to for school domestic science, but on a big scale and bake on the island having first done the egg, flour, butter maths.
It's a bit of treat really: I like baking cakes, but don't do it often. The dispiriting problem is that my son finally confessed that he 'doesn't really like cake much' and there's no point being a domestic goddess when your audience consists of a confirmed atheist. In fact I now know that he used to sell my cake when he was at school (banana bread made the best profit at £1 a slice which seems extortionate since he wasn't providing a squashy leather sofa and caramel latte on the side). So now I will flex my baker's muscles and set off tomorrow with the cake tins and vanilla along with projector and templates.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Press
Since this enamel project began I have been promising myself a holiday at the end of it and now, like Jack with his Beanstalk, I have just swapped Nirvana for hard work. While I may not have to fight vertigo and a cross giant, I will have to forgo two weeks of drifting about Sicily wearing Ray-Bans and a series of flimsy dresses for digging footings and shifting hard core.
We went to a party where a friend of a friend idly mentioned that she worked in a school with a printing press and they were toying with the idea of selling it, but that it was 'a bit big'. We did some swift research and discovered that the press was a) an Albion made in 1851 b) perfect apart from needing a duster and c) affordable. The chances of this happening in the real world are about the same as being paid good money by a County Council to create a landmark artwork when they, you and the manufacturers have no idea how, or even if, it will work: ridiculous even to imagine.
So we bought it and that was the cheap part. Moving it from Barnet to Buckinghamshire involves hiring the services of experts in moving printing presses. The good bit is that they too are based in Barnet, the bad bit is the cost. Looking at their quote I can only assume that they will be flying in the brightest and the best of the Sherpas from Everest Base Camp, wrapping our press in several protective layers of hand beaten gold and conveying the whole thing to Buckinghamshire with a full military escort. To be fair, the press is about 2m high and must weigh well over a ton, is made of cast iron and will smash like an irreplaceable dry biscuit if dropped. It will also need to be installed, aligned and made to work in mysterious ways before I can use it.
Oh and we have to build a new studio big enough to house it...
So the holiday plans went early on and probably the holiday after that too. But it really is OK as the press is a far better thing than a suntan and I'll find time to paddle on the beach at Sandown - the holiday equivalent of a power nap - when I go to the factory for my final few days.
We went to a party where a friend of a friend idly mentioned that she worked in a school with a printing press and they were toying with the idea of selling it, but that it was 'a bit big'. We did some swift research and discovered that the press was a) an Albion made in 1851 b) perfect apart from needing a duster and c) affordable. The chances of this happening in the real world are about the same as being paid good money by a County Council to create a landmark artwork when they, you and the manufacturers have no idea how, or even if, it will work: ridiculous even to imagine.
So we bought it and that was the cheap part. Moving it from Barnet to Buckinghamshire involves hiring the services of experts in moving printing presses. The good bit is that they too are based in Barnet, the bad bit is the cost. Looking at their quote I can only assume that they will be flying in the brightest and the best of the Sherpas from Everest Base Camp, wrapping our press in several protective layers of hand beaten gold and conveying the whole thing to Buckinghamshire with a full military escort. To be fair, the press is about 2m high and must weigh well over a ton, is made of cast iron and will smash like an irreplaceable dry biscuit if dropped. It will also need to be installed, aligned and made to work in mysterious ways before I can use it.
Oh and we have to build a new studio big enough to house it...
So the holiday plans went early on and probably the holiday after that too. But it really is OK as the press is a far better thing than a suntan and I'll find time to paddle on the beach at Sandown - the holiday equivalent of a power nap - when I go to the factory for my final few days.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Hard Day's Night
Last week at the factory I did a few 5am starts. People were impressed to varying degrees about this: my teenage son refused to believe that it was possible to get up at 4am with the intention of working, though obviously it's fine for him to come home at 4am with the intention of sleeping. My London friends were all horrified and obviously have visions of Wells as some sort of throwback to the early industrial revolution - all soot and brimstone with small children forced to shovel coal into furnace mouths through the night. To the guys at Wells it's no big deal: 3am is the early start. The only person who seemed in any doubt there was Lucy the printer who confessed to me in low voice that she didn't think it was entirely 'normal' to get up and still have the moon in the sky. Having done the five until five shift I have to say that I prefer the moon to be at one end of the day or the other, both is a bit much.
I'm not bad at getting up, but the switch from a 6am start to a 4am one did call for an alarm. Fortunately I had the inspired idea of setting my phone to a ring tone so banal and offensive that I was awake in a psychotic rage before I knew it, neatly combining early rising with a full cardio workout. Also fortunately in the quiet factory I was able to work my way down from vile to bad tempered to slightly ratty before anyone much arrived.
The early starts also meant bringing food in with me for various meals. Some people, Colin is a shining example, had things really sussed with stacking tupperware like Japanese bento, taking them through the day in neat courses. I had microwave porridge and an uneasy relationship with the chocolate machine. I work next to the vending machines and there is a steady stream of men who have an entirely guilt free approach: if they want three Mars bars and a packet of Monster Munch for breakfast, they do. I sat around like a large and grubby Miss Muffet with my bowl of porridge wondering if extreme weariness was enough justification for a kitkat. I need to either get over that or get some tupperware: my final week will certainly be more of the same.
I'm not bad at getting up, but the switch from a 6am start to a 4am one did call for an alarm. Fortunately I had the inspired idea of setting my phone to a ring tone so banal and offensive that I was awake in a psychotic rage before I knew it, neatly combining early rising with a full cardio workout. Also fortunately in the quiet factory I was able to work my way down from vile to bad tempered to slightly ratty before anyone much arrived.
The early starts also meant bringing food in with me for various meals. Some people, Colin is a shining example, had things really sussed with stacking tupperware like Japanese bento, taking them through the day in neat courses. I had microwave porridge and an uneasy relationship with the chocolate machine. I work next to the vending machines and there is a steady stream of men who have an entirely guilt free approach: if they want three Mars bars and a packet of Monster Munch for breakfast, they do. I sat around like a large and grubby Miss Muffet with my bowl of porridge wondering if extreme weariness was enough justification for a kitkat. I need to either get over that or get some tupperware: my final week will certainly be more of the same.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Mini and Me
Before I head down the A34 to the ferry, as I will be doing shortly, I do a sort of vehicle check on my mini. As I refuse to devote more than two neuron's worth of in-brain space to car maintenance, it does mean learning how to open the bonnet all over again and a few minutes matching the pictures in the manual to the stuff under the hood. This time I'm low on a liquid in a white Tupperware box that balances on the top of the engine which means a trip to buy brake fluid top up apparently. Hopefully insertion will mean nothing more than prising off the snap tight lid and pouring the stuff in. Need someone to develop the necessary processes for getting a landscape off the back of an envelope and onto about 600 square meters of enamel and I'm your woman, but anything car related beyond slopping liquid into various tubes is further than I want to go.
Last time I was down at Wells the furnace man informed me that my car was rubbish* and that all minis have in fact been rubbish since they were made by BMW. This was news to me on several fronts. I should have known about BMW: the fact that I bought the car from a BMW garage could indeed have been a hint, but in the fairyland of my imagination I like to think that the Issigonis grandchildren are overseeing production in a workshop somewhere British and rural. The rubbish bit seems unfair to me, though I agree it would be nice if the boot were designed to hold more than a slim volume of poetry and a lamb cutlet. In its defence, the car is a lovely shade of true red which is rare in car paint, the inside is as pretty and practical as Barbarella's spaceship and, since the car is very short and I am very tall, it fosters the brief illusion that I have the legs of a Thompson gazelle every time I climb out of the driving seat. What mortal woman could ask for more? Well, except for the keys to an eight litre Veyron of course. The minute I have diplomatic immunity and £800,000 to spare that's what I'll be driving.
In the meantime I'll top up my rubbish car's brake fluid, fill up its rubbish boot (and I must agree with you on that one Kev, it is a rubbish boot) along with its rubbish interior and hope that it's rubbish brakes work on the way over to the factory this weekend.
*words have been changed to protect reader's sensibilities.
Last time I was down at Wells the furnace man informed me that my car was rubbish* and that all minis have in fact been rubbish since they were made by BMW. This was news to me on several fronts. I should have known about BMW: the fact that I bought the car from a BMW garage could indeed have been a hint, but in the fairyland of my imagination I like to think that the Issigonis grandchildren are overseeing production in a workshop somewhere British and rural. The rubbish bit seems unfair to me, though I agree it would be nice if the boot were designed to hold more than a slim volume of poetry and a lamb cutlet. In its defence, the car is a lovely shade of true red which is rare in car paint, the inside is as pretty and practical as Barbarella's spaceship and, since the car is very short and I am very tall, it fosters the brief illusion that I have the legs of a Thompson gazelle every time I climb out of the driving seat. What mortal woman could ask for more? Well, except for the keys to an eight litre Veyron of course. The minute I have diplomatic immunity and £800,000 to spare that's what I'll be driving.
In the meantime I'll top up my rubbish car's brake fluid, fill up its rubbish boot (and I must agree with you on that one Kev, it is a rubbish boot) along with its rubbish interior and hope that it's rubbish brakes work on the way over to the factory this weekend.
*words have been changed to protect reader's sensibilities.
Friday, 16 January 2009
Show Time
I can announce that the first of my panels went up in Aylesbury's Great Western Street last week. I went down at the weekend to have a look. My reaction to seeing a piece of my work slapped five metres high and about thirty six metres long across a public space was essentially English: I found myself doing a sort of dance. You have to understand that this wasn't an American-style high-five air-punching victory dance, it was a sort of hopping shuffle on and off the kerb born of the profound desire for there not to be a fuss. I was pleased; it did and indeed does look pretty damn good (you can check it out on my web site), but it was all a bit much really and could I now be excused to have a cup of tea and a sit down? It turned out that I wasn't to be excused until my husband had taken many, many photographs. It was minus five that day and my embarrassed squirming had turned into a hypothermia avoiding jig before he'd finally finished.
I've been back a few times for a better look and have reached the point of being able to flirt with the idea that it's a fairly big achievement. It's a bit hard to see the art at the moment to be honest: the panels have a blue protective film over their surface and the whole thing is surrounded by scaffolding and a fence covered in strict warnings about hard hats, steel toecaps and who to call with the remaining digits of your right hand in the event of an accident.
It's great to see a whole section in one piece. Anyone who has, like me, spent happy hours with Airfix kits will understand that there's magic in the moment when seemingly entirely unconnected parts of a model all come together (for some reason I had a thing about making bi-planes when I was young, I made lots extremely badly and never painted any, littering my bedroom with pale blue-grey plastic debris). However, there are still gaps and an unfinished section to complete. I met the site manager Derek who is responsible for overseeing the installation of all my panels in Aylesbury and he was extremely keen for the work to progress. He was very nice about it, but I get the message: there's a few dozen men in reflective vests awaiting my finished work and sooner would be better than later love!
I've been back a few times for a better look and have reached the point of being able to flirt with the idea that it's a fairly big achievement. It's a bit hard to see the art at the moment to be honest: the panels have a blue protective film over their surface and the whole thing is surrounded by scaffolding and a fence covered in strict warnings about hard hats, steel toecaps and who to call with the remaining digits of your right hand in the event of an accident.
It's great to see a whole section in one piece. Anyone who has, like me, spent happy hours with Airfix kits will understand that there's magic in the moment when seemingly entirely unconnected parts of a model all come together (for some reason I had a thing about making bi-planes when I was young, I made lots extremely badly and never painted any, littering my bedroom with pale blue-grey plastic debris). However, there are still gaps and an unfinished section to complete. I met the site manager Derek who is responsible for overseeing the installation of all my panels in Aylesbury and he was extremely keen for the work to progress. He was very nice about it, but I get the message: there's a few dozen men in reflective vests awaiting my finished work and sooner would be better than later love!
Friday, 26 December 2008
Christmas Story
The house I rent while I am staying on the Isle of Wight is about a half hour commute from the factory and, since winter came, has been a drive to and fro in the dark. As my last visit coincided with the start of Christmas, there were various displays of lights en route. The garden centre had fairly freaky lights on their conifers which, in combination with my enamel dust filled eyes, danced alarmingly in and out of focus Bridget Riley fashion, causing me to drive past at geriatric speed each night. The real stunner was in Sandown itself. The wattage was so powerful and the combination of religious and festive icons so varied that it was a couple of days before I managed to make out some of the detail.
One of the things I noticed was a giraffe in blue twinkling lights. Now I went to a fairly high church Anglican boarding school and we had plenty of religious instruction. We had our own chapel and in addition to the usual daily assembly service we had evening chapel twice a week, Communion Wednesday crack of dawn, Compline Friday evenings and full services Saturday and Sunday. Come Christmas there were a lot of extra services and I emerged at seventeen with an encyclopaedic knowledge of hymns, ancient if not modern, and a fair grasp of the King James Bible. Nowhere could I place a blue giraffe in the Christmas story and yet I drove past it each evening, large as life and beautifully detailed.
Finally I decided that the thing to do was to go and have a proper look and see if there was some sort of African twinning theme happening. Imagine my utter disappointment when I walked up to the building from a different direction and discovered that my beautiful blue giraffe was in fact just an ordinary tree draped at random with a string of lights, reliant entirely on the angle of the road and the height of my mini to conjure it into life. I thought about this, wasn’t happy and decided that there was a bit of space in the Christmas story for a blue giraffe after all. What if one of the wise men (wiser than the other two and perhaps with kids of his own) realised that no young mum, however inexperienced, would let her infant near frankincense, myrrh or gold pieces so, knowing all babies like bright colours and soft toys, took an extra baby-friendly present in the shape of a blue giraffe?
One of the things I noticed was a giraffe in blue twinkling lights. Now I went to a fairly high church Anglican boarding school and we had plenty of religious instruction. We had our own chapel and in addition to the usual daily assembly service we had evening chapel twice a week, Communion Wednesday crack of dawn, Compline Friday evenings and full services Saturday and Sunday. Come Christmas there were a lot of extra services and I emerged at seventeen with an encyclopaedic knowledge of hymns, ancient if not modern, and a fair grasp of the King James Bible. Nowhere could I place a blue giraffe in the Christmas story and yet I drove past it each evening, large as life and beautifully detailed.
Finally I decided that the thing to do was to go and have a proper look and see if there was some sort of African twinning theme happening. Imagine my utter disappointment when I walked up to the building from a different direction and discovered that my beautiful blue giraffe was in fact just an ordinary tree draped at random with a string of lights, reliant entirely on the angle of the road and the height of my mini to conjure it into life. I thought about this, wasn’t happy and decided that there was a bit of space in the Christmas story for a blue giraffe after all. What if one of the wise men (wiser than the other two and perhaps with kids of his own) realised that no young mum, however inexperienced, would let her infant near frankincense, myrrh or gold pieces so, knowing all babies like bright colours and soft toys, took an extra baby-friendly present in the shape of a blue giraffe?
Sunday, 21 December 2008
Listen Again
I've never been a fan of rave music to be honest. Actually, if I am entirely honest, I'm not very good on the subject of music at all. I dread the 'what music do you like?' question which usually wipes my mind entirely clean of any music related information. It's not that I don't like music, I do, but I like such a bizarre selection of fragments that it defies band, style or even genre. My brother-in-law and I sat down with as many CDs as we had in the house about a month ago and he complied a play list for me. After a trying few hours he looked at me kindly and said 'You do know it's really only music to do other things to?'. Since he lives in a flat insulated entirely with CDs, I guess that's me categorised: "likes music to do stuff to" which brings me back to rave music.
Thanks to Kev and Dave I have found that the stuff to do to rave music which makes it really, really excellent, is to pitch up in the 4.30am darkness when there's only the three of you awake, the furnaces are welcomingly blistering and getting six panels fired and back is viable before the factory fills up at 7.00am. I should say that I was late, they'd both been in since 3.00am, but I'll try harder next time we get a backlog on my work. It was early enough to make eating rum truffles at 7.45am seem perfectly reasonable, much as the porters in Covent Garden downed early morning pints, but I don't recommend it - it catches up with you later believe me. By 10.00am I'd been at Guy's stash of paracetamol, by 12.00pm I'd scored Pro-Plus pills off Dave and by 2.00pm I was only awake thanks to the sugar rush from a brick sized piece of Colin's birthday cake. I stuck it out until about 5.00pm by which time I was ready to lie face down on any available flat surface which is exactly what I went home and did.
I came home on Saturday on the early ferry clutching a hamper of Island produce courtesy of Wells. Why they should be so kind when I'm well aware that my need for random access to the furnace must make my visits a nightmare to accommodate I'm not sure, but I'm going to enjoy eating the lot. Again Red Funnel came up trumps in the costume department. This time it was a ferry man in full Father Christmas costume with his own lavish beard. As I was climbing back into my car at Southampton I heard the following exchange: small child "Santa, what are you doing on the ferry?" Santa, without hesitation and with exasperation "Nipper, it's my day job. Six more hours of this and I have to get back to the North Pole for the sleigh, so get back in your car and stop bothering me with your questions." Classic.
Thanks to Kev and Dave I have found that the stuff to do to rave music which makes it really, really excellent, is to pitch up in the 4.30am darkness when there's only the three of you awake, the furnaces are welcomingly blistering and getting six panels fired and back is viable before the factory fills up at 7.00am. I should say that I was late, they'd both been in since 3.00am, but I'll try harder next time we get a backlog on my work. It was early enough to make eating rum truffles at 7.45am seem perfectly reasonable, much as the porters in Covent Garden downed early morning pints, but I don't recommend it - it catches up with you later believe me. By 10.00am I'd been at Guy's stash of paracetamol, by 12.00pm I'd scored Pro-Plus pills off Dave and by 2.00pm I was only awake thanks to the sugar rush from a brick sized piece of Colin's birthday cake. I stuck it out until about 5.00pm by which time I was ready to lie face down on any available flat surface which is exactly what I went home and did.
I came home on Saturday on the early ferry clutching a hamper of Island produce courtesy of Wells. Why they should be so kind when I'm well aware that my need for random access to the furnace must make my visits a nightmare to accommodate I'm not sure, but I'm going to enjoy eating the lot. Again Red Funnel came up trumps in the costume department. This time it was a ferry man in full Father Christmas costume with his own lavish beard. As I was climbing back into my car at Southampton I heard the following exchange: small child "Santa, what are you doing on the ferry?" Santa, without hesitation and with exasperation "Nipper, it's my day job. Six more hours of this and I have to get back to the North Pole for the sleigh, so get back in your car and stop bothering me with your questions." Classic.
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