Bank Holidays, don't you just love'em? The chance to have a day off from the diurnal drudge of whatever you get up to on a daily basis and with the radio speaking to the nation can potter in warm contemplation about in your shed, inevitably with the rain battering down on the roof. Can't beat it.
Well maybe you can go one better by meeting up at The Potting Shed, in nearby Crudwell to celebrate the 2nd May Bank Hols on SUNDAY 25th and join in their launch of a new ale as part of "Shed Fest"? You can snooze the rest of Monday, if you are not re-building your "Brownie Point Mountain" . . . .
What's not to like, Bank Holiday, a launch of a new cask ale and the possibility of some ad hoc singing? More to follow. Maybe see you there?
Imagine this correspondent's excitement when the drudgery of the journey home through thick, mirky fog was punctuated by news of a radio program about coping with life and doing it with Sheds!
A program about Sheds? On the radio? That'll be Shed Town.
In actual fact it was Steven Mangan speaking on the Simon Mayo Show at around 1 hour and 7 minutes and 56 seconds in, to be precise. Steven describes it as being about "a group of people who leave their ordinary lives behind and go and live in sheds on a beach to escape", "they are all there for different reasons, but it's a sort of benign cult", "it's funny, and it's, er, slightly odd, and it's quite emotional, and it's really interesting".
Sound familiar??
They go on to discuss (at around 1:12:00) that "a shed is a very powerful image, people love their shed, it's a haven, it's a storage place and they'd be lost without it, particularly men", "it's the man cave idea", "it's something about our psyche, we need it", "all men lead lives of quiet desperation and it's about trying to escape that." - how very true.
A little more from the scraps of websites that exist about the program say "Shedtown is a dream born out of quiet desperation. Sitcom about two middle-aged men who, after being made redundant, decide to live on a beach. Series One has two friends finding themselves slipping inexorably into middle age and throughout Series Two our wooden icon of escape and isolation 'the shed' becomes a symbol of possibility and change; a new community by the sea where our heroes can circumnavigate the mundane, once and for all."
Sounds grand, don't miss it. Point your iPods or BBC Radio digi iPlayers and the like, or, heavens above! your very own Wireless Radio device towards the venerable BBC2 on Thursday 10th January at 23:00 or the iPlayer thingy.
If you would like to hear The Magnificent AK47 singing about these vital pieces of modern life, then click here.
Continuing the shed related literature motif, it has been brought to our notice that there are other books of note on the topic that is so dear to our hearts, and that are also along a slightly racier theme for the more risqué connoisseur of outbuildings.
And shameless lifting some blurb from the page on the intriguing Menkind website which describes the book as "a hilarous stocking filler or secret santa gift for that bloke for whom you just don't know what to buy! 50 Sheds of Grey is (as you've probably guessed) is a spoof of that famous erotic novel".
"Colin Grey's life was happy and simple until the day everything changed - the day his wife read THAT book. Suddenly, he was thrust head-first into a dark, illicit world of pleasure and pain. This is the story of one man's struggle against a tide of tempestuous, erotic desire and of the greatest love of all: the love between a man and his shed. WARNING: This book contains graphic shed-based images. Please don't look if you are easily offended."
The original website can be found at http://fiftyshedsofgrey.tumblr.com/ and there is also a Twitter thingy if you really haven't got anything better to do at https://twitter.com/50ShedsofGrey or are simply cruising the Interweb from your very own shed.
Coming soon a posting on an unmissible offer relating to a publication dedicated to Tunnels - we kid you not!
Recently spotted by one of our undercover blokes, this publication should be on everyone's Yuletide Gift list.
As the blurb on Amazon says "The Joy of Sheds is a shed miscellany that chronicles man's need for a small space on his own. It's a humorous look at every aspect of the shed experience, mixed with shed facts and some practical information too. Many famous people have created in sheds. Inventor Trevor Baylis thought up the clockwork radio in a shed, George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalian (sic) in one and Dylan Thomas would compose poetry in his."
And indeed, a bloke's shed can be a very inspiring place, witness the beautiful, haunting and plaintively evocative piece written for BlokeFest by Roger Jackson as can be found on one of our many SoundClouds.
If you have any tales from or photos of you in your shed, we would be very pleased to receive them via themagnificentak47@gmail.com.
