I promised you a bear.

OK, so I have proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that I am really rather rubbish. It is almost 6 months since I spent my hour entertaining the world on the plinth in Trafalgar Square and there has nary been a peep from me in the meantime.

If you really must know what happened then you could do far worse than click on the link to the right – it takes you straight to the archived video feed of my hour courtesy of the one and other website.

Looking back now it was a weird and surreal experience that I enjoyed immensely, and certainly dined out on for a few weeks afterwards. I was gifted good weather and a receptive audience that participated wonderfully, and there were no nerves or vertigo. I am getting ahead of myself though – here is how it went…

We were up bright and early on what, frankly, looked like a miserable day. I dressed in my best and brightest Hawaiian shirt and shorts, made sure I didn’t shave, and shoved carbs down mine and my children’s throats. Emma probably chose to have a little cottage cheese, or slice of lettuce or other such hearty breakfast fare. Then we were off. We had the car fuelled and loaded already for the camping trip we were going to straight after Trafalgar Square. Naturally I was looking at the clock the whole time during the drive up to Hounslow where we left the car at my brother’s before catching the tube into the centre of London. I had to be there to ‘check in’ at half ten before my 12 o’clock slot.

It looked a bit dodgy on the weather front when we arrived, but I had a raincoat and wasn’t too concerned. The check in was interesting mainly because of all the form filling and the media interview and photo session (I kid you not – maybe when the book comes out I will be on the cover or something). I was also promised a T-shirt in lieu of the £1 fee I was to be given to cover my appearance costs. It is all a legal requirement so they can use my image however they see fit – I still haven’t seen either the clothing or the pound yet though. (Note to self – chase them for a T shirt).

Whilst this was going on the weather turned a bit dodge and the poor old man stood on the plinth before me decrying the state of the health service postcode lottery drug availability for his wife was starting to look as though he had had a swim in the Thames. I was concerned. Hawaiian shirts don’t have the same impact when you are drenched.

Then it was time. I climbed into the cherry picker, miked-up for the viewing public, with raincoat and donated umbrella and glory of glories, the sun came out. And stayed out for the whole hour.

What an interesting hour it was too. Whatever nerves I had quickly dissipated as I plugged in my phone and earpiece and set up my signs – The Trafalgar Square Helpdesk was open for calls, and call they did!

Since you can watch the whole thing for yourself I will just give you the bullet point highlights:

• Being asked whether worms can get drunk
• The sun
• Sandwich recipes
• Finding that my wife’s suggestion of getting 2 signs paid off when one of them blew away
• Where can you get the best Hawaiian shirts?
• All the friends and family that called and visited – too many to mention, but it was great to hear and see you all
• What would win a fight between a bear and a lion?
• The conversation on the phone with the tour guide for a bus load of tourists that drove past (and cheered me).
• The realisation that 8 meters up aint so bad when you have a safety net
• Getting a bear delivery
• Recipes for cherry pie
• Checking the time and finding that 55 minutes had flown by and it was almost over

It was a blast, a head rush, a defining moment and, through the power of the internet, an experience I can re-live in all its glory whenever I want. Then it was over.

We left without the free t-shirt and headed off to The Rain Forest Cafe for a celebration lunch. (N.B. if you have ever been to The Rain Forest Cafe in the States then avoid the one at the Trocodero – it tries hard, but it just can’t compare). The trip back to the car and the drive down to the New Forest to meet our friends and camp with lots of kids for the weekend is a bit of a blur. Once the tent was up and the beers were out then I was able to sit down, take stock and relate the story of my moment of fame for the first of many times.

Life is normal again now. I still have the suburban semi, expensive kids, people carrier, loving wife and debts to make most third world countries feel well off. The job is continuing to work out well, and who knows what I may achieve there yet, at 42 I still have “prospects”.

Now this particular blog is over, I have to wonder what I will write about next, for write I will.

The Trafalgar Square Helpdesk:

07960 817297

12 noon to 1pm, July 24th.

Not that I expect it to be all doom and gloom. Unless it rains.

It has been a looooong time since I posted – sorry and all that. I have been through a fair bit over the past couple of weeks that has, to say the least, been distracting.

Things have changed a bit at work. Actually, that is a bit of an understatement. Things have changed fundamentally at work, and although the change is definitely for the better, it could have easily been for the worse.

Basically I was faced with redundancy. 3 weeks ago now I was pulled into a meeting and told that one of the helpdesk manager roles was becomming redundant, and myself and my co-manager were in competition for the sole management role that would come out of the “consultation”. I thought ‘Arse’, because I had to admit that my colleague was the better manager. I am a techie who has found himself managing a team by default (not to say I didn’t work for it at the time, it is just that the competition was lacking). My colleague is a manager running a technical team, and the company was really looking for a manager. She was the better fit, and I was faced with an uncertain future.

Over the past couple of weeks though many people have pulled out the stops and worked behind the scenes to find me a continuing role within the company, something that I will be forever grateful for. Again, I had to work for it – this was no sinecure, I had to be a good fit for the job and prove myself competent and compatible. This week I have started my new role as a QA technician within the development team. The money is much the same (let’s be honest, these things are rather important), but most importantly it is a foot in the door in a technical role that I have wanted for a long time. It is going to be a challenge – there is much that I need to learn, and quickly. There is no doubt though that there is lots to get my teeth into, and a future with endless possibilities if I am up to the task. I have to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped make this happen for me.

So anyway, back to the important stuff now that I have got that distraction out of the way. Tomorrow I stand on the plinth.

Aaaaarrrrggggghhhh!!!!

What am I going to do? Well, I have been continuously returning to the idea of “The Helpdesk”, and since I am now suddenly no longer in a helpdesk position professionally for the first time in almost 15 years, it seems fitting that I should have my swansong on the plinth. I have got the gear together – a chair, a couple of signs (”Trafalgar Square Helpdesk” and a mobile number), a netbook, a phone with a temporary number and I am now prepared to take calls and answer questions. Any questions. Literally anything at all.

This is going to be interesting.

This may turn out to be a bit of a joke in every sense, but also it may turn out to be an interesting and fulfilling experience. I have workmates coming to visit me, and a lot of people know the phone number in advance, so even if I don’t get general calls (which I somehow doubt) I will certainly end up chatting to someone during the hour.

The only spanner in the works is that rain is forecast for the session, which might put a dampener on proceedings in every sense. Fingers crossed it will be clear though, and even if it does rain, I will still be ready to talk.

I always say to people “have fun”. That is what I totally want for myself tomorrow.

Rosie with her wonderful bubble machines

Here I am trying to persuade my wife that she really isn’t fat, but only because she is sat awkwardly on my knee. (She is really slim you know) and Rosie has just got onto the plinth. We like Rosie.

Rosie makes us happy with her bubble machines and bottles of bubble mixture. The fact that me and the missus have done serious damage to a bottle of 10 year old single malt has nothing to do with it whatsoever. Bubbles. Ahhhh!

I admire the people who have to get on the plinth at 2 in the morning seemingly only for the entertainment of the insomniacs and the drunks. And they still think of doing something fun like getting multiple bubble machines out. Respect. I have a nice easy slot at noon, which is great for the lunchtime crowd (half the London office are apparently going to come along to laugh at me), it does mean that I am going to be that little bit more “exposed” though.

The best suggestion for things to do I have had so far is to set up the “Trafalgar Square Helpdesk”. So many people think it is a good idea and it is definitely the way I am heading.

Fortunately I will be more sober when I do that. For now I am going to metaphorically wave goodbye to Rosie and wish her well. I have a whiskey induced bed head on now.

I nip in and out of the plinth webcast through the day to see what is to be seen, and there was one guy on Wednesday that has really made me think.

He stood there in a pose that, in my cadet days, was known as ’standing easy’ – legs comfortably apart, hands lightly clasped behind back. He stood near the “front” facing the temporary office structure that has been erected in the square to support the project, and he did nothing.

Not a sausage.

The most exciting bits were when he closed his eyes for a bit in silent thought. He didn’t communicate with anyone, and he didn’t move. My first thought was that this was boring, and I went back to what I wasn’t doing. I came back though, and he was the same. Later on he still hadn’t moved. I didn’t want to watch that and left the webcast for a bit.

I have seen people with telescopes at night (very popular), wacky people with microphones, a gorilla, agendas – lots of agendas, people creating art (the start of a recursion loop that could get messy), people on chairs and loungers, people with messages and props. None of this, however, has made me think more than the guy just standing there.

I admire him. I admire the bravery and the focus. Here I am agonising on what I am going to do with my time when the thing that seems to have made the greatest impact is to do nothing.

That statement alone opens up new avenues that must be explored. What is my motivation? Why is having an impact seemingly so important to me? Has the perfect plinth moment already happened, and if it has what does it really matter. This is not a competition.

Can I copy him?

That would be interesting. To stand there, just thinking, watching the world go by and basically doing exactly the same thing as somebody else. Copying is allowed, that goes without saying, but does it show a paucity of imagination, or an acknowledgement that perhaps doing nothing at all has more meaning than any number of balloons and paper aeroplanes?

Something completely different

Now this is a brilliant idea!

I run a technical helpdesk. It is a suitably geeky job with predominantly nice interactions with lots of lovely estate agents. No really – they are much maligned. I really like estate agents, especially the ones signed up for our property sites. The fact that they pay my wages is purely co-incidental.

Anyway, there have been ideas floating about that I could set up a helpdesk on the plinth. It would be a great bit of advertising for the company, and it would be amusing to have a foldaway chair and table, little laptop with network dongle to dial into work, and a mobile to call agents and fix their problems. It is taking work with me and turning it into part of the art, but what the hell – this is supposed to represent the population of the UK, and work is what most of us do for a sizable chunk of our times.

There is, possibly understandably, a bit of nervousness about the idea in certain quarters. The agents may not want to be discussed in public (there are microphones on the plinth), the company may not want to be associated with someone who could potentially decide that doing a streak as part of the “performance” suddenly feels like a really good idea. I am not likely to get my kit off, but I could if I wanted to!

So how about this – I get a pay as you go sim, charge the phone, make a sign along the lines of “Plinth Helpdesk – 07xxxxxxxxx” and sit up there waiting for the calls.

It is so simple and rather excellent. It is different, it is representative of what I do as a job and I can see it amusing me enormously.

As long as I don’t get someone who should be calling Samaritans. That would be bad.

16 people in, and we have a pigeon

Frankly I am almost speechless.

I suppose I have to applaud the home made costume, and the fact that she is flapping her wings and coo-ing.  The sign saying “Please feed the pigeon ” is also a nice touch.

I thought that a pigeon costume idea would be a bit of a joke, and a bad one at that. I have to say though that I admire the chutzpah. I don’t think I could do that.

This has been an interesting day for me, seeing what others are doing with their hour. I am not sure whether this is just a forum for peaceful protest, bad jokes, social awareness and missed opportunities, or whether it is actually more than the sum of its parts.

Don't feed the pigeons, they may attack

Now that is more like it. I was beginning to despair. So far this morning, the first of the 100 day run, we have had a lady in white T-shirt, black trousers (although they could have been jeans – the quality of the video feed means that I will probably always assume that jeans are black trousers) and trainers, followed by a bloke in a red t-shirt and Khaki shorts, followed by a lady in a summery black and white striped dress, followed by a lady in a brown jacket and a yadda yadda yadda.

Yawn.

I thought that there was going to be some really interesting clothing going on here. At 1pm on the first day, my prayers have been answered though. We have a town crier. He has the full regalia and is doing the whole “shout a message at the top of my voice” thing going on. Very good.

Basically, I wanted to know what people are going to wear, and I think we can comfortably assume that from the sample given so far, it is going to be 4/5 normal. And why not. My personal day to day clothing ideal would be to have 7 identical sets of clothing, one for each day of the week. I find choosing clothes to be tedious in the extreme and I really need some help here. I suspect that I may end up going down the route of delegating my clothing choices to my long suffering wife. She is used to dressing small children and shouldn’t have too much difficulty with me.

Somebody did suggest that I dress up as a pigeon.

The less said about that the better.

Some of the things that have been done on the plinth so far have been more interesting than the clothing. We have had NSPCC awareness, someone releasing balloons with messages, an artist (very interesting actually because her easel wouldn’t stay upright – it was too windy), and the aforementioned town crier. Plinther number 2 let the side down a bit (red T-shirt and khaki shorts) because he just stood there looking really embarrassed. I would like to think that I will be slightly better prepared than that.

18 days to go now, and this is starting to look a bit more real. Whatever I end up doing I am going to have to think about the wind.

I have £5 on the bald guy on the right, he looks like he plays here often

It may be helpful to know that I am a bit obsessed with games and puzzles – not just computer games (although I was a ZX Spectrum kid, so it is in my blood) but more importantly, board games. I own a lot. Nowadays they are waiting for my next regular opponents to get old enough to play, although Isobel, my 5 year old daughter, is beginning to show a serious aptitude for them.

Anyway, I digress. One idea I have had is to integrate my hobby into my time on the plinth. There is the obvious idea of setting up a chess board up there, and talking through a game on the phone with someone remotely. It could work. It could also be incredibly boring to watch.

You could extend this to many other games that have finite state mechanics, i.e. the complexity of the game comes from the interaction of pieces and there are few choices each go, but over time there becomes an almost infinite number of possibilities for the whole game. Generally speaking, games of luck wouldn’t work, so Monopoly is thankfully out.

Games that would work well over the phone:

Chess, Othello, Most Gipf project games (link is in the link list), Go (at a push perhaps).

Games that would not work well over the phone:

Kerplunk, Twister, Hide and Seek.

There is also the opportunity perhaps for some audience interaction. I am sure there must be an easy way to get bingo cards out to the audience in the square, and then draw the numbers out of a bag.  Give a prize of a chocolate bar.

I want to be able to play and interact, perhaps by being creative with the game ideas I can do precisely that.

Beyond the initial preparations, here you are paid for doing nothing.

My biggest problem is not knowing what to do with myself. It could be argued that this isn’t limited to the question of what I will do when I stand on that plinth, but putting the irrelevant stuff to one side I am still slightly at a loss as to what to do.

Anthony Gormley has personally, and without considering my feelings on the matter, set me a challenge. The fact that I applied is irrelevant as he had this damned idea in the first place, and it seemed so good. Now that I have won my slot I have to start thinking about it. Lots. It’s OK for Mr Gormley to have the meta idea, but he is now walking away and leaving the hard bit to the 2400 living statues that will each bring their own interpretation of “art” to the table (plinth) whether they like it or not.

So what have I got to work with? Well, there’s the rules. They are pretty straightforward really – you can take whatever you can carry, you can do whatever you want. Nothing illegal, and there isn’t any power supply. Beyond that, the possibilities are endless. So why do I want to do the sort of stuff that I would normally do if I had an hour to spare?

Here was my initial thought.  Take a fold up chair, a laptop and a mobile dongle. I could use the Internet, blog here perhaps, take some photos and post them, maybe even play a little World of Warcraft. And why not? The artist has gone to great lengths to ensure that the demographic of “plinthers” (is that a word?) closely matches the make up of the UK population, so why not represent that major slice of the population that would spend free time on the Internet playing games.

It’s a great idea. It is like life imitating art imitating more art. Or something. Unfortunately I suspect that every other person is going to be taking their laptops up on high and doing precisely the same thing. It does represent what people do, but wow, it is boring.

I raised this question a while back to some friends and their responses were not completely helpful.

1. Feed the pigeons.

2. Have someone in Trafalgar Square throw fruit at me.

3. Get my willy out.

4. Throw fruit at people in Trafalgar Square.

I am sure there are better ideas out there, the question is, are they things I would want to do and would I be brave enough.

I am definitely going to take a photo of a cuddly toy, but perhaps that is a story for another time.

A successful reconnaissance

I have spent all day, near enough, getting myself ready for this moment. I have installed Wordpress, removed it, installed it again and uploaded some files. Activated it (which was disturbingly easy) and then played about with some themes. I didn’t like the fact that none of the themes had my photo built in, so I spent a couple of hours creating a banner photo and then trying to work out how to integrate it into the page.

And it works!

This doesn’t surprise me since I normally get things to work. It does however leave me with one small problem, and that is how to start this blog.

Perhaps I will never work that bit out. What I do know is that the default title that the people at Wordpress give to their first example post seems completely appropriate, and it also appeals to my sense of humour.

Anyway – a big “Hi” to you!

At midday on July 24th 2009 I am going to stand on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for an hour, and right at this moment I am not clear exactly what I am going to do there.