Outreach

This morning's Horton Clockwise started off with finding a bit of outdoor art on Stamford Green, the result of an outreach programme, a collaboration between the Borough Council and the University of Creation up the road. Public art being one of the few functions left to local authorities.

This particular work was the work of one Suzana Herculano-Houzel, originally from Columbia, but now studying for a MPhil at the University. Inter alia, I was very struck by the very strong contrasts she had achieved between her whites and her blacks, contrasts which really brought the whole composition to life.

Moving on from creation to destruction, at the exit from what used to be the West Park Hospital, we had what looked like a bunch of junior volunteers, observing from a safe distance the activities of some senior volunteers, that is to say chain saw operatives, at work. I understand that within the volunteer community the junior volunteers are known as pad-saws. See reference 1 for some of the many notices of senior activities.

Then at the other end of Horton Lane, we had the Easter fun fair coming together. Said by a poster to be Europe's No.1 travelling fun fair. More fun fair was arriving as I went past, leading to the thought that maybe the Easter fair was the occasion for the visit noticed at reference 2: perhaps there will be sulky races on the arena on Easter Monday. Also to the thought that markets and fairs were the occasion of very early central government activity in the commercial life of the nation - not least because of all the opportunities for raising revenue, at a time when most of the (medieval) economy was cash poor.

Then at Pound Lane, a skip finally delivered the length of rafter I had been looking for to repair the compost bin with. I did not like to take without asking and luckily a chap turned up who understood enough English to assure me that I was welcome to whatever timber I could carry away from the skip. So I did. More on the repairs in due course.

PS: in case you were wondering, sulky is a perfectly respectable word, nothing to do with Romanis. It is present and correct in OED, with the first recorded use from the mid eighteenth century. So named, we are told, as the sulky only has room for one. By extension, a one person bathing machine. Not sure where the one bit comes from, certainly not from the French, as while Micro Robert recognises the word, it also claims that it is English.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=14th+west+horton.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/visitor.html.