Here’s a daft thing I’ve been doing: painting wee buckshee bits of wood bright red.
I’ve only done three so far, but doubtless I’ll do more, and the plan is to dot them about the garden as, er, points of interest. At this time of year they’ll look Christmassy too.
I’m not sure why I started doing this. Artistic impulse? I’m not really that guy. I can’t draw or paint images, and have no aspirations to visual art.
A DIY even I can do
That said, I like painting wood. True, I baulk at painting a stretch of fence or whole shed. It’s time-consuming and boring. But little bits I don’t mind.
It’s a kind of DIY that even I can’t mess up, other than getting paint on my clothes, hair and spectacles.
And I like bright red things. I painted the front door of my last house bright red. Red is jolly, which is why we like Scandinavian houses, posties’ vans and pillar boxes.
Indeed, I like all bright, primary colours, which is why some of my garden fences and gates are vibrant green and yellow.
I was the talk of the rural steamie on another island when I painted my fence blue.
This was a place that fancied itself having Scandinavian heritage, assuming the Vikings sailed up in their longships from Airdrie or Motherwell, but which left all its wood grey or broon in the gloomy Scottish manner.
Off-cuts from branches
As for my wee bits of wood, they’re offcuts from branches picked up in woodland near the Lonely Shore, as my latest wheeze is to rebuild my troublesome, ever-collapsing arch out of these.
Not least because buying useful sized pieces of wood these days has somehow become difficult.
The little, wild, sawn-off end-bits are all random shapes but, once painted bright red, they take on new life and a kind of nobility or sense of being special.
They’ve been plucked from the damp obscurity of the wood, dried, sandpapered, painted and given a new purpose and pleasing appearance. At least I think so.
Some pixies did it…
I’m not sure what plausible explanation I could give visitors to the garden: some pixies came and did it.
I should also mention that I’ve painted a perfectly oval 6-inch stone bright red too. I inherited this with the house. It was in the estate agent’s specs: house, garden, wee oval stone.
It’s very smooth. I suppose it must have been bought in a garden centre, but I like to think of it being Neolithic, ken?
An ancient tool of some sort, perhaps worked by some poor bloke in a loincloth making a botch of his DIY. I am the proud inheritor of an ancient tradition.
Yellows and blues might be next
The stone is currently drying out from its third coat of paint, after which I will find it a spot in the garden where it can sit looking, er, enigmatic.
I’ve a feeling that, after enough red, I might start applying yellows and blues to wood and stone, though the thought worries me slightly. I don’t want to become known for this practice.
“Do you ken yon McNeil fellow?”
“Aye, it’s yonder loon who paints peculiar things bright colours for no reason at all.”
In the meantime, as the garden is mostly hidden from public view, let it be our secret.
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