“Imma spark up a thought off every surface in this room,
And just sit back and watch it all ablaze…”
I will miss my lovely lush backyard. It’s a good thing we’re moving at the tail end of winter… if it were spring, I might not be able to stand it.
Most of the ornaments and other bits and pieces that make up the fairy garden will stay where they are. I like the thought of people finding them one day, a fairy garden buried around a tree stump. The grass has already grown over some of the fairies, swallowed them almost completely, it’s been so long since I put them there.
Two years, in fact. The TinyTrainHouse has been good to us.
There’s a small outdoor laundry in the backyard of the TinyTrainHouse, just a few metres from the back door. It’s fairly rudimentary structure but it has power and water connected, shelving and storage space installed. It’s become my ‘office’. Somewhere I can sit and smoke cigarettes and type on my iPad, or browse Reddit on my phone once my children have (finally) gone to bed.
A week or so after I first moved into this house, I happened to have a pencil in the laundry shed with me. And, in what seemed like a good idea at the time, I drew myself a little pencil clown over the light switch next to the door in the laundry.
I don’t remember who wrote or drew the next instalment for our own personal living, expanding work of urban art. But in the almost two years since I drew the clown, most of my friends and some of my family have left their mark on the walls of the laundry in one way or another.
Some of the writing on the walls is awesome. Some of it’s awful. Some of it’s inspiring. Some of it’s illegible. Only once have I requested the removal of a pencilled sentiment. Somebody that I used to know wrote up a joke that managed to be racist, sexist and pretty damn disgusting, all at the same time; and seemed baffled when I requested he scrub it out.
Other than that, all graffiti is fair game. It’s been an interesting experiment, to say the least.
Given that we’re moving out of the TinyTrainHouse, it seemed sad not to immortalise the artwork on the walls of the laundry on my blog.
I’ll have to start some new kind of instalment at the house in Melbourne, when we get there. Probably one that doesn’t require writing on walls, given that we’ll be renting. I’ll keep you posted. Until then, here’s the best of what’s written on the walls at my place.
Song lyrics
Quotes from books.
Proverbs
Nonsense.
Post Secrets..
Occasionally there’s even real-looking art scrawled on the walls…
…all of it is courtesy of my friend Kristabelle.
The laundry walls. Not pretty. But interesting to read.
More pics recorded for prosperity on Flickr.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I love it. It’s a bit like having a diary but you let your friends occasionally scrawl in it so it isn’t just your perspective.
Could always try chalk at the new place. That way you can wash it off the walls when you leave.
I love it. So very ‘hippy’, so very, very cool. I’ll have to make a foray over to Flickr to check the rest out. I used a thin sheet of MDF up against a wall to do similar (mine was just a collage of interesting pics snipped out of magazines) in a rental. Maybe that will work in your ‘new’ place?
Hugs