Sunday, February 03, 2008

James May - shed champion

A nice piece by early music fan and petrolhead James May in the Telegraph, essentially saying how marvellous sheds are. Here's an excerpt:
"To my mind, any structure not part of the regular living accommodation is in effect a shed. The attic can be a shed, and so can a basement. I have what the estate agent described as "the garage" but, spiritually, it's a shed, because I would never do anything so crass as to store a usable car in there. It's for "projects". And all the best things in the world came out of sheds: the aeroplane, television, radio, the power loom, home-brew, blasphemy, potted hyacinths, the machine gun and, if we stretch the definition a bit further, Jesus... I've often thought that there is something about the ambience of a shed - the way it liberates its occupant from the stifling conventions concerning decoration, function and acceptable behaviour that apply to the rest of the house - that stimulates inventiveness. But it occurs to me that we only see a few Marconis, Logie-Bairds or Baylises per generation and, for them to emerge, there needs to be a general and all-pervading morass of shed-based activity, just as a lot of other people were learning to play the piano at the same time as Beethoven."
Well worth a browse.

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