Just Say No

Lots of choice when it comes to 'No Parking' signs, it almost seems that phrase is written into our DNA. In fact there are so many varieties I am going to have to break them down into types over several postings. These ones are domestic scale and what they have in common is a homemade vibe. The little blue one adopts a familiar colour scheme and official format, but attached to the wall of a private residence it's authority seems more advisory than enforceable. Even so I think this little number must be effective and recommend a neat 'blue and white' plaque as a discrete device.

The peeling red one above it was spotted in strong sunlight, adding to the feeling of faded glory. The well preserved lettering is made up of white tape, the distinctive angular typeface formed by fashioning letters from straight lines looks like it was spawned from the 70's or early 80's when electronic type was in its early days and awkward calculator writing impressed us!

While we are talking about typefaces I've got to say this black and white sign, painted directly onto a plank of wood and screwed straight into the wall is a corker. Modest and workaday (argh, americanism horrible word, how did that creep in?) it must have survived a good many years. Very stylishly executed with closely packed, elongated letters that are not wasting an inch of their baseboard. Lets hope it lasts many more years for its good looks alone and remember, if you want to make your own No Parking sign, whether slick, stoic or stylish, make it a good looking one.

Summer in the City

The first stack of three body support sleep systems stopped me in my tracks, they seemed so neatly arranged and almost left behind by accident. But lets suppose someone actually left them there intentionally because they couldn't be arsed to deal with them properly. Naughty. And the thing that always gets me about that is you imagine they drove there in a van and dropped them off. Well why not go the extra mile (literally) and carry on to the corporation dump? Slackness.

But for now lets put that issue aside and talk about aesthetics and just look at these lovely big dollops of incongrous patterns and colours introduced to the grey urban landscape. Next day I've come across mattress number two, a dual patterned number occupying a hinterland between a park and some houses, couldn't tell if it was a kids temporary plaything or another unauthorised dumper who'd dragged it across the street and abandoned it. Last up in the mattress medley is this big, sloppy pastel number. It's never gonna fit in that bin, destined to be there for some time, luckily while its hanging around it can bring a bit of bland tartan action to the street party.

While I'm on about soft household items in unusual places, I've also seen some slightly more functional outdoor furniture on my recent travels. Of course such things have a shelf life, a comfy sofa placed outside on a sunny afternoon can soon turn into a sodden, maggot infested piece of debris with feral kittens popping out of a hole in the arm. But for now lets stay on a positive vibe and imagine it is really a kind of community bench with extra padding. What I liked about this inner city moment was the addition of a rifled copy of yellow pages at arms length from the couch. The scene I saw was of a root through the phone book, a quick call and a young man drops the book and dashes off on a mission to get a washing machine component before the shop closes (or some other specialist item). Living room life transposed outside the boundaries of the home.

Some times people leave stuff outside for others to help themselves to when they have upgraded their own household goods. In fact you can almost see the newly unwrapped mattress or sofa (or table or bin or clock...) in a house next to the spot where the old model has been put out to dissappear. Or perhaps languish and degrade before becoming someone else's problem, leading to eventual removal by the invisible authorities. While I've been proccupied by (perishable) soft furnishings I spotted this group of orange stools, a pouffe-like group next to a couple of disgarded mats and a box that contained some new electronics. On closer inspection I realised that they are made from re-used plastic milk bottle crates with home made orange padded covers! I marvelled of the inventivness of this solution born of neccessity and lack of money and thought at the same time of who might be one step down in the food chain and see them as a lucky find.