So we parked up at five minutes to four, waiting for Maddie’s school coach to arrive.
Her stop is a country pub car park.
Felix and I observe who arrives and leaves, who comes to take the sun in the beer garden, as the week wears on and the people from the offices feel the need to unwind away from the glimmering screens and the striplights.
This afternoon there was a departure from the norm as a wave of people arrived dressed in black. It must be, we concluded, a wake.
At some wakes people are uncomfortable with death. Haunted by Victorian tradition they feel ill at ease in their tailored clothes, observing the stilted ritual of British mourning.
But this was not such a group. Whoever had died bound them together with an ease and comfort which lasted beyond the grave.
They felt able to smile and talk, remembering. A car arrived with a very old lady sitting in the back, and we watched while a woman extended her arms to support her, as she put her weight onto two frail legs and lowered herself carefully into a wheelchair.
Felix notices things I don’t. His eyes had drifted from the group and wandered elsewhere.
“Mum!” he exclaimed. “Look! There’s a dog on the roof!”
Imagine a terracotta Victorian roof which meets in an apex. There at the highest point, running the length of the apex, is a set of rounded finishing bricks. And sitting there, with his doggie elbows leaning comfortably on the rounded bricks, was an Airedale terrier.
The tight-curled creature had us fixed in a stare – was it worry? A warning? Come up on my roof, intruders, and you will feel my wiry wrath?
The question was: if half the dog was leaning over the apex: what was the other half doing? It looked to all intents and purposes as if he had scaled a gable roof, and if this was the case his rear must have lamentably little to support it.
A dog on a roof? Whoever heard of such a thing? We got out of the car and stood there guffawing helplessly. Rarely had anything seemed so out-of-place.
Although, come to think of it, there was the Giant’s Chair.
One day, in the middle of Dartmoor, a 20 foot rustic chair sprang up out of nowhere.
Obviously it didn’t. It was put up by artist Henry Bruce on his own land: but it had not appeared anywhere in the planning annals of the Dartmoor National Park Authority, and it was a complete surprise to the hikers and adventurers who stumbled across it by accident.
And who loved it, of course, because there is something indefinable which marries the chair and its landscape. Maybe once upon a time giants did dwell on Dartmoor and the hills have remembered the scale of their former inhabitants.
Word spread like wildfire and folks came from far and wide to see the chair which should have been incongruous, yet seemed so at home.
The planners got it, of course. When retrospective planning permission was sought, the local worriters declared that the tourists would bring too much traffic and the area simply couldn’t cope.
It has been dismantled, and is looking for a new home.
Incongruity, it seems, can be utterly engaging. Like the installation which is enchanting Londoners with its element of surprise and its ability to render itself comfortable and at ease where it should be awkward and stiff.
The venue: Euston Road. It’s not a pretty sight, and an even less pretty sound with traffic thundering by.
Along came an artist called Bill Fontana, a Cleveland man with a head for sound. He calls himself a sound sculptor. Now, thans to speakers stationed at The Wellcome Collection, passers-by are engulfed by the sound of waves crashing onto Chesil Beach in Dorset. He calls it White Sound.
It’s Fontana’s reasons that are so compelling. This is not about drowning out traffic noise, but about playing a sound in an unusal place – so we sit up and appreciate it anew.
“Most people really don’t pay any attention to the sounds around them. I want to create an art form that challenges that,” he told the BBC in a recent interview.
“To change the context in which you hear something, you change the meaning of it.
He added: “And if you were to take a wonderful recording of Euston Road traffic and played it in the middle of a desert, it could have something magical about it that you fail to appreciate in its usual setting. ”
A dog on a roof, a 20 foot chair on a moor, and waves on Euston Road.
They are doubly beautiful, immeasurably more meaningful, because they are in a different place.
Kate Shrewsday 
I don’t have a clue…
what you are talking about… but I sure love how you say it…
Hey, did you notice the bean stalk that grew into the cloud above the chair? I’m messing with ya of course, as usual, which is why I had the dog situated on the roof…
I’ve been slightly interested in researching the “Giants Causeway” is that anywhere near you?
God Bless Ya’ll
paul
Everywhere is near in American terms, Paul 😀 But it’s a journey across the sea to Northern Ireland: Speccy is a bit closer than me….
oooh a lovely start to my day.imagination wandering around enjoying the sights and sounds of different
thanks Kate
Glad you enjoyed it, Sidey 🙂
Great post, Kate. Love the dog on the roof… at my old house we once found a hunting dog scrabbling round the roof of the swimming pool shelter… he was lost. And that chair’s amazing and the idea of waves on Euston Rd makes me smile… thanks.
This is the second post I’ve read in two days about funerals. Have a look at this poem. I found it very powerful:http://tiny.cc/fkcr2
Amazing where you can find a dog if you look 🙂 Your link is absolutely beautiful. And so true. Must make sure to leave some light behind me: whoever’s funeral that was yesterday, I feel sure they left plenty behind.
Love the chair and the dog on the roof… in fact the dog on the roof reminded me of the shark on the roof. Imagine: I cycled along this road on the way to work in 1986 – an early shift, and was one of the first to see this
http://oxforddailyphoto.blogspot.com/2009/08/headington-shark.html
Yikes!
Priceless: and well done to the Oxford Daily Photo for such a brilliant snap! Love it, Pseu. Enough to get anyone off their bike.
This was beautiful, Kate. The giant chair, I would have loved to see it its original setting. And the dog. And the sea waves. Somehow, I feel so happy after reading this.
Great! I felt happy after writing it. Incidentally, your writing has very much the same effect on me….I keep having to share it….
I’m thinking about preparing some jokes for my funeral.
I love the…what’s the word?…the free thinking (not the word but it’ll have to do) of the chair, the sounds, the dog. A chair, a sound, a dog – all quite ordinary stuff until they move out of their slot.
I enjoyed this post.
It’s a wonderful concept, Tilly, isn’t it, and Bill Fontana puts it so beautifully. Out of context means we view the ordinary in an new way. How exciting.
Must think up some funeral jokes….
I have walked in those Giant footsteps that someone else mentioned – The weird oddity of it has stayed with me all my life. I was only about five at the time and we where in Ireland visiting relatives. I love all those odd things. Maybe one day I’ll head back to check them out.
When you do, Trudie, take lots of photos and report back! It’s one place I would like to know a lot more about…
Some years ago a pyramid was built in a northern suburb that could be seen from the major expressway cutting through it. There were still cornfields around it at the time, so, it looked quite, well, out of place. It’s still there, but, not the cornfields. Office complexes and houses hide it from sight. I miss seeing it unexpected grandeur.
Did the dog come down?
He did not. He did, however, unhook his elbows and disappear from view, onto what we now realise-having consulted Google Earth- is a hidden roof terrace.
This is what is big in our neck of the woods right now.
http://www.dbg.org/events-exhibitions/david-rogers-big-bugs
I think Felix will like it.
Glorious, Tammy 😀 they look amazing!
Loved this post, Kate.
Must say, however, that oversize chairs always put me in mind of a uniquely American art form: Lily Tomlin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocBO0fr1Ui4&NR=1
I am the shortest among my siblings and, to this day, if I sit in a chair which won’t allow my feet to reach the floor, someone will quip, nasally, “My name is Edith Ann, and that’s the truth . . .” 🙂
I adore Lily Tomlin….and Sesame Street. No wonder the big Dartmoor chair brought it to mind 😀
Up with climbing dogs and down with the planning pests! By losing the seat they should lose a seat on the Commission.
Reminds me of the shock of returning home one day to the spectacle of one of our Irish Wolfhounds bounding happily all over the roof. More gently pitched than Brit houses, of course. Snow doesn’t happen there..
That must have been quite a sight to behold, Col. 😀
The whimsical in the every day is one of the greatest gifts of life. That unabashed whimsy is the greatest thing to preserve as we move from child to adult. Sometimes, it is what keeps me sane in the craziness of things I don’t understand. Great post, Kate.
Thanks, Andra; you’re so right. Surprise and delight are necessities to me.
OMG, how enchanting, Kate! Who would ever think of playing wave sounds in the city…except of course for Bill Fontana? What a refreshing mind. It reminds me of yours, which never fails to uterly delight – thank you!
Thank you, Naomi: and can I thank you for that amazing footage of Steve Jobs at Stanford. No-one should miss that…I’ve shared it as much as I can. Even sent it to my current head master!
Ditto to what so many of your other responders say, Kate. Wonderful post to remind us all of the life-affirming effects of creative surprises, anomolies, living engaged with dying, out of the box thinking, messing around with what we think should be…thank you for reminding me to be more unpredictable…to contribute more stuff to the human story.
Your contributions are fairly momentous already, Deborah: your zest for life is irrepressible, and you choose a path which many humans have forgotten entirely. I am full of admiration for your journey.
Oooo how on earth did he get up on the chair Kate, and how is he getting down safely? Ah of course, when the Giant comers back… He must’ve put him there in the first place… stands to sense really. and I loved reading about your different places…all with a charm of their own…here doggie!! 😀 xPenx
Library pic, thankfully Pen, and none of my relatives are teetering there. I wonder if there are hidden steps the other side? Admittedly, they’d have to be very hidden…
I love this effect, Kate, in that something so out of place breaks our daily automaton trance and makes us look and listen to our surroundings in a completely different way – great post!
Thanks BB….we have a heightened awareness now. I wonder how many out-of-place things will jump out at us in the next day?
A wonderfully discursive post, full of nooks and crannies. ‘Incongruity, it seems, can be utterly engaging’. Indeed.
Thanks, Dick: now, of course, I am unable to stop seeing things ‘in different places’ everywhere I go….
We had a giant chair like that near us at Thomasville Furniture in NC. Loved it ~ great photo op.
Wonderful post:
A dog on a roof, a 20 foot chair on a moor, and waves on Euston Road.
They are doubly beautiful, immeasurably more meaningful, because they are in a different place.
That is so true. The world’s beauty catches us by surprise when we open our eyes and ears.
It’s the surprises that keep us guessing through life, isn’t it, Nancy?
Wow, I just love that giant’s chair – what a shame it had to be moved. A very interesting post – incongruity creates the interest. I do pay attention to sound and when I travel it is often the sounds that make the place alien or different – the absence of the bird sounds I know and love etc.,
Hi Gabrielle! Thanks for coming over to take a look! You make a very interesting point. Sound is our most deeply embedded sense: when we return to consciousness, we hear first, feel and see later. As you say, sound tells us something is incongruous before anything else does.
Oh my! So much of life is at least unbalanced, and the shifting perspectives can be tough. I’m traveling with elderly parents at the moment and it is I who feel a little out of place. Your delightful post has me thinking about the incongruities I may overlook and fail to see the beauty. Engaging writing, Kate! Debra
Thanks Debra! So you are The Third Man right now….hope you and your parents enjoy your travels, and that your incongruity becomes an asset somewhere along the way 😀
OK, so we live in a bungalow. The roof at the back is flat, and we had a labrador cross that loved to sit on it. She would scale the wall of the house – and just sit there in the sun. Her delight was to chase the birds that landed at the other end, but little did they know, she could also scale the roof which was on the old part of the house. She would creep up behind them, then bark just before she got to them.
Once she barked at just the wrong time and a man fell of his bike at seeing a dog on a roof. I’d love to know how yours got there…..
I think he lives there: it’s a pub and the living quarters are on the top. From Google Earth pictures I gather it’s a flat terrace sandwiched between gable rooves- you can’t see it from the ground. But the dog did look comical.
I LOVE your story….poor old cyclist: I would probably have fallen off too 😀 Must look out for more dogs on the roof….
I think that artist, the sound sculptor, is on to something. Now if only I could get him to sculpt my downstairs neighbours and their “authentic Irish music” parties out into the middle of the… well, somewhere – them and their authentic bodhrán drum (authentic Irish whiskey too, I would imagine, judging from the escalation of sound as night wore into morning). 🙂
Ruth, one day someone will invent something to cancel sound out and that will be a glorious day. Meanwhile, as you are the upper flat perhaps a retalliatory Riverdance party might be in order?
I’ve just remembered about the art exhibition at Tate Modern Liverpool…
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/artistroomsroberttherrien/default.shtm
with large furniture!
I’m wondering, Kate, that if I was to hear a sound in a place where I shouldn’t hear it, whether or not I would recognise the sound. What I mean is, when I see someone (who I recognise but don’t know very well…) in a place where I don’t know them from, I don’t recognise them. Mt mind’s very odd at times.
However, a very interesting post once again. I love reading things that make me think. Thanks, Kate. 🙂
Context can make all the difference, Tom, it’s an interesting point. It happens so rarely that the sound is in the wrong place. You do remind me of a riveting description in The Woman In Black by Susan Hill, where the central character is in the haunted house and hears a sound he cannot place because it’s out of context. It turns out to be a rocking chair moving back and forth: all the more chilling because of the way he has to grope towards the conclusion.
The anomalies in life are what make it all worthwhile 😀
Hear, hear: vive la difference!