Letting the dogs out...

It’s been a while since I got to a beach, a long while and I don’t know when I’ll get to go again. Seems I’m a bit stuck at the moment, my life going around and around in the same old groove, except it doesn’t feel very much like a groove at all; there’s not really any groove to it. I’m not quite in a rut yet, but I think I can see one hiding in the distance, just waiting for me to get stuck in it.

So, to the beach - the thing I miss most about the beach is opportunity. You never know just what you are going to find and I miss my beach creatures you see. Oh, I know they are all still there a-waiting, hiding in the wash-up waiting to be released, but without me just who’s going to release them?

Yes, I miss my beach creatures.

I’ve started to look longingly at the kitchen bin. Well, bins and bags and buckets really – we have to separate our rubbish into any number of exciting recycling modes. I’ve started to wonder what I might make from the cans and boxes, bags and bottles, bread and peelings that we throw away each week. Could I find a creature in the bin I wonder?

Probably; there’s always something lurking beneath the surface.

I’ve even taken to looking in the shoe cupboard. Could there be a something hiding amongst all those shoes and slippers and boots, flip-flops, sandals and clogs? I’m sure that there must be; a shoe dragon or boot monster patiently waiting for footwear release.

Ah, the joys of discarded ephemera and bits of old clothing.

I came across this on the web the other day, a chap that makes all sorts of fantastic things out of rubbish. David Kemp lives and works on the far western coast of Cornwall among the old mine workings near Botallack. He finds the material for his work in junk and then makes that tat into whimsical sculptures.

The hounds of Geevor, or "cannus stannus geevoritii", as David calls them, are a pack of underground dogs. Each hound is made from three and a half pairs of Wellington boots, discarded by the miners when the local tin mine closed down ending a four thousand year history of tin mining in West Penwith.

Four thousand years, almost a lifetime, and at the end of it all that was left was a pile of rubber boots. Well, at least someone saw the potential in them, saving the boots from landfill and letting the dogs out. Brilliant, simply barking brilliant - if I can get hold of enough old wellies I might try and make one myself.

In the meantime… maybe I can find something hiding at the back of the pan cupboard.