Friday 10 February
Stag Hunting
Inching closer and closer to the prize
We are inching closer and closer to the end product. I realize that inching may not be the best speed at which to approach something as important as Chelsea Flower Show but for me it is fine. It’s like hunting a stag: The stalking has to be carried out with enormous care and diligence as each footstep is carefully considered before it is taken in case one stumbles in the heather and ruins ones chances. This all takes a considerable amount of time and I imagine is quite boring to watch but then right and the end, bang! The drama comes all at once, it’s over in a second and you’ve got your prize (hopefully).
In this rather tenuous and fragile analogy only last week I was still on the train on my way to the Glens. But now I have disembarked, checked into a rather chic hotel with a huge roaring fire, partaken of a hearty breakfast, donned unfeasible amounts of tweed and the prerequisite funny hat and I am clambering up a hill with a shotgun broken over my arm and a full hip flask in my pocket. So what has brought on this sudden change of pace you cry?
Well last week I had a meeting with water feature man, contractor man and rendering man all at once and much was discussed most of which fell into the ‘essential but tedious’ category which I then put into a box onto which I have written the word ‘progress’ in a thick black pen. And then this week I have visited bench making man (more of that next week) and sculpture men.
Graham and Steve who are from Northern Ireland are, it has to be said, a little like actors in a Guy Ritchie movie. We met for the first time on the pavement outside an electroplaters in Walthamstow and I spent the next few hours being blasted by wave after wave of heavily accented enthusiasm but more importantly I was able to see something which had actually been made and existed somewhere other than in my mind or on a piece of paper. In fact it was only samples but it was a massive beginning if such a thing is possible? There were two panels of the rings that make up the sculpture so we can experiment with the finish and the size of the copper ‘washers’ and the welds and everything else and also a curved one third scale model of an entire section of the sculpture. This I only saw briefly and it was upside down and covered in streaks but it was a thing of beauty and although we still have weeks of stalking ahead of us it felt good to be in the company of these two experienced hunters. Over the next few weeks we should resolve all the details and the actual sculpture can be made and I promise to drop the whole stag hunting thing.
Andy Sturgeon
M&G Garden 2012 designer