Saturday, June 18, 2011
Oddments
One use to say of British Airways 'speak their name with pride'. Then there was the tail fin saga. Readers may remember all the fuss and bother when BA thought to paint their tail fins with arty-ethno designs. Rather clever but widely disliked, notably by Mrs. Thatcher. Probably The Queen. Now we have the tail fin saga reprised. It now seems that the marketing chaps at BA are game for another go and were so impressed by the work illustrated here on May 12th last year (about the fifth hit if you search for 'detritus'. Click to enlarge) that they have commissioned the Dame Trace to run a competition to choose a collaborator to work with herself on an installation which wraps up a tail fin. One of the conditions is that the work must involve dirty sheets and the contents of a litter bin selected at random, but at midnight and from under a full moon, from among those in WC1A. They, the marketing chaps that is, took a full page advertisement in the Guardian to tell us all about this important event. Shall I sell my modest number of shares in disgust? Shall I pen a 'yours disgusted' to the Guardian? Or perhaps to the DT?
But there is hope for the arty world yet. I recently read about something called the rolling bridge, installed in Paddington Basin. Been around since 2005 but I had never heard of it before. A footbridge of modest size over a canal, made of eight triangular sections which roll up onto the right hand bank when a boat wants to go through. I have hopes that this might be an attractive and interesting looking artefact. Although I suspect the attraction might be reduced by the rolling up turning out to be a bit of a gimmick, there being no actual requirement for boats to go through this particular bit of canal.
Further afield, FIL recently inspected a rotating bridge in Falkirk, a contraption which replaces a flight of locks (now under a housing estate) and which moves canal boats from one canal to another. It looks rather splendid in its pictures but I did wonder about value for money given that the thing must have cost quite a lot of millions. Did the ratepayers of Falkirk think it a good idea? Did they want the council to whack out their hard earned dosh on this bit of regional pride?
I defer judgement until I have seen the thing for myself.
PS: I feel the need to report that today, for the first time in 37 weeks, I have polished a pair of shoes. Brown shoes. The polish was a bit dry but it still worked. Polishing shoes has become something of an event since I moved into the world of trainers at the suggestion of one Hugo Williams.
# posted by Jim @ 1:29 AM 
