I haven't blogged in a very long time, this is because I've been doing things in real life, but now those things are over I have free time to inform the Internet of such things.
The thing that has taken up most time recently was making an Eagle and then covering it in cigarette packets- why was one making an eagle? I you you cry....well according to a online quote supposedly from me:
"The eagle sculpture is a visual way of celebrating the successes of all those who have already stopped smoking, and will hopefully inspire other to do the same."
That's not what I actually said, if they had bothed to ask why I was making it I would have said.....
" Well my mate Pheobe sent me a facebook message saying she was looking for a artist to make an Eagle sculpture for Non-smoking day the artist would get to be a little bit famous, and there was a big budget for it as everyone knows the NHS have more money than they know what to do with. Then she said lots of stuff about resin and polystyrene which are not things I know what to do with, so then I chatted on to her about willow and wire and metal mesh which are materials I get, and kind of pretended I knew exactly how to make an eagle and she let me do the project."
or if I was to give a shorter answer as to why I made it I'd probably go for "fame and money"
So I made the structure and then on non-smoking day we went to the most run down shopping center I've ever seen and asked people to stick their cigarette packets to it. We were meant to go in a van but ended up going in a Nissan micra. The only way me pheobe the eagle and the plinth could fit was if I went inside the plinth. which is what I did. I was retelling this tale through the medium of text message to Dan and he said 'what makes me think you didn't have to go in the plinth but volunteered to?' (yep we could have gone in 2 cars and yeah he knows me too well.)
In the shopping center we found that even if people wanted to quite smoking they didn't want to give us their cigarette packets, which meant that I had to take the eagle back home to finish it off. As a non smoker with very few smoker friends this was pretty annoying because it meant I had to trail the streets looking for empty cigarette packets- an activity that I enjoy less than most things but more than doing a tax return. It's pretty grim when people give you odd looks for picking up soggy fag packets, but on the plus side several people have commented about how my area is one of the best areas for finding rubbish on the streets. I even found 5 unsmoked cigarettes which I briefly considered smoking before concluding that 25 is too old for and experimental first smoke and it would be too ironic if 20 years from now I'm a chain smoker all because of non-smoking day.
