Mr Potato Head's Nudie Girls

3rd September
I'm going to our local woodyard a lot these days to get timber for the film sets. The yard rambles across several properties, involving about four houses, one of which is a burnt-out shell and used as storage. The whole estate is strewn with wood in every state, huge tree trunks some sliced into planks, pile upon pile of structural timbers and everywhere the flotsam of rotten pallets and bits of packaging. The establishment is run by a sweet-faced man who looks like a potato, and his father, an old man in shorts and a bandaged knee. The mother is short and fierce. If I turn up and neither of the men are to be seen she calls their attention by shrieking like a film heroine suddenly coming cross a horrid murder.

When I’ve selected my timber I have to wade through yapping dogs to get to a tiny office where I wait while the son laboriously writes out a bill in copperplate handwriting. The office is stuffed and the walls are completely stuck with bits of paper. The most prominent items are the girly calendars. There are about four of them, all a bit out of date. Only two pages are visible because they are hung in two sets and doubled up, one calendar over another. The girls have been changed each time I go in. Father and son seem to be continuously locked in combat and I wonder at what point, after years of arguing over which Honey is to be on view, they decided to have a girl each.