Super Spore

Super Spore, originally uploaded by escher (waiting for Autumn).

I am not sure how this story will turn out. While I was out making this sculpture I realised that I hadn't had any breakfast and my blood sugar had plummeted. I felt very light headed and woosy and a handful of sugary wild blueberries didn't help. So this story may write itself as I still haven't recovered. It might be a true account or it may be a hypoglycaemic reverie of imagination. I'll let you know once I have finshed, or perhaps you can tell me when you stop reading.

Since I made the first spore I have wanted to make another. Bigger and stronger so that I can roll it down a hill. I used dogwood to construct it and I was taken aback by just how much material I needed. It was very dense and heavy and as I made it at the bottom of the hill so then I had to lug it to the top to take it's photo (plus camera, two tripods, a rock and a set Chinese meal for one). It was not an easy thing to carry, heavy and unweildy and it made it quite plain that it was not the only dense thing around here. Someone else must be too, to think that carrying such a spiky, twisty, heavy thing through thick undergrowth was a suitable leisure activity! Not only that but the dense undergrowth was sodden with dew and soon I emerged soaking wet from the chest down, trainers filled with water, leg stabbed multiple times with sharpened sticks and a sore wrist bent out of shape by the fruit of my labour. My "cover" story would sound about as plausible as the "I was vacuuming in the nude when..." tale told to hospital emergency staff.

The heather was in full bloom and the rowan trees dense with ripened red fruit. The blueberry leaves had turned golden and marroon red and the fell was awash with colours. Low blood sugar was not needed to enhance the riot of hues but I am sure it helped a little bit.

And then began a long period of fiddling with the sculpture just that little bit too much in the forlorn hope of going home to eat something. I'll bring a golf analogy in here as I think one is needed as they don't come past here very often, although I have to add that I hate golf. Sculpture fiddling as us "land art profeshkneealls" call it is like being two foot from the hole and putting twelve feet past it. In your desperation to get it right you fiddle past the point of no return and make a mess of what was nearly finished. It's like driving 1000 miles only to turn off one junction early and getting lost. Faint and light-headed as I was and desperate to go home and do the washing up, I really needed to get this finished but I also needed to get it right too.

So I fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and as I write this I am still not sure if I over or under fiddled or reached fiddler perfection. The photos are still downloading and none so far are any good and what's more I still haven't done the washing up. So if the photos are rubbish you won''t even get to read this and then I will have to eat off of dirty plates tonight. No-one realises that all this stuff goes on. I'll bet you look at a picture and go "ooh that's nice" but you have no inkling of the trials I have to go through to get that picture. Missing breakfast, rolling out golf analogies when I don't even like gof and eating off dirty plates. Really, you lot have it sooooo easy. ;-)

There is a riddle for the locals here. The place the spore is positioned is well known to me and putting it there is a sign of things to come.