Statue Wars

Last month, shortly after Edward Colston the Slaver was pulled off his plinth and dumped in Bristol's city dock the Mayor sent a dawn crew to dredge him out of the water and haul him off to a secure holding place. First thing the following day a fat concrete bloke, wedged in a wheelie bin was parked next to Ed's empty plinth. By dawn the next day the Binman had disappeared.

The weeks passed, no plinth action - until -  4am last Wednesday the famous sculptor Marc Quinn came down from London with a big crew and cranes and ropes and tv cameras to install a 3d printed effigy of Jen Reid, the woman who had climbed onto the plinth as soon as Edward Colston fell off it. The image of her punching the air had circulated around the world, Quinn and many others saw this as an iconic moment and this sculpture was christened 'A Surge of Power'.  All of Bristol was agog and flocked to see Jen and take pictures, to praise or complain and argue about whether or not this was actual history or just fake history.

By dawn the next day, the Mayor's crew had removed Jen, putting her alongside Ed and the Binman. Marc Quinn had not been invited to interfere with our plinth and Bristol should decide its fate democratically.

Good luck with that - but the bar has been set and I am looking forward to the next contender.

I'm painting billboards

to protest our government's enthusiasm for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

My shiny leopard-skin-effect shopping trolley was used to ship pots of paint to the billboards. I unpacked it mostly without incident but pulling out the last pot of paint made the lid came off and the contents emptied into the trolley. I pushed it over a drain expecting the paint to leak away - it didn't but neither could I tip the paint out of the trolley without making very big white mess on the brand-spanking-new-multi-million pound pedestrian surface so I let the trolley be a paint kettle which was ungainly.

The underpass (where I was painting), attracts people who need to do a bit of public shouting - the morning was spent with  three Friends of Jesus and a sound system and the End of Days. They moved on and the drunks who normally live close to my house came to sit and watch me and then an American-girl-with-a-guitar arrived, she was lovely and friendly but she only knew Empire State of Mind which she sang in the voice of  Kermit-the-Frog - the drunks howled along like Youtube huskies.

I have to go back and finish the job tomorrow