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The Metaphorical Shed

19:57 / 26.10.04

Feeling somewhat nomadic at the moment I've been daydreaming about what my eventual room will be like and musing on what it takes to make a place your own rather than just a place you are?

The classic example in my head being the traditional British shed. That place you can go that's yours and you can lock the world outside and do whatever it is you do without interruption.

For example I have a friend who says his house isn't his home unless he has a certain mask from his collection of household gods on his wall.

Myself it's a little more prosaic, my computer set up properly, my books on shelves (sorted into some sort of order) and the collage of art and bits and pieces that I've collected over the year up on various walls. Probably a legacy of the places I've lived which hadn't had their walls painted for years but I definately like my walls filled wth colour and images, it just doesn't feel right otherwise.

So what's in your's then?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:01 / 27.10.04

Computer, record collection, stereo, lots and lots of books. A bit like my room now, really.

Oh, and a kettle. You have to have a kettle in your shed, or there's no point.

12:45 / 27.10.04

Where I lay my gnome is home.

All I need to feel 'at home' is more than half of my lawn gnomes, my computer (it helps if its in a comfortable set up, but not required), and a good assortment of my books. Everything else is extra. Then again, my definition of home is "where I sleep on a regular basis."

Looking back, I suppose I need a few posters aswell, because I was just compelled to grab some from my old room last time I was at my parent's house.

13:08 / 27.10.04

If it's going to be a traditional garden shed, then a spare mac, a dead crow and a picture of Charlie Dimmock, plus a few bottles of weedkiller filled with neat gin, and an extensive collection of Kay's and Freeman's catalogues, with particular emphasis on the underwear section.

13:27 / 27.10.04

Books, cats. Paints and a easel.

Probably also an assortment of "dead things" - dried flowers, animal bones and skulls, feathers, sticks, cool rocks, fossils. I tend to gather that sort of stuff.

And this one particular painting, done by a friend of my father's when I was very small, which has been in my house for as long as I can remember. I took it to school with me and which now hangs in my study. It's like a constant companion. Not to mention being very cool to look at when in altered states of consciousness.

14:06 / 27.10.04

A floor to sleep on. a seat to sit on, somewhere to burn a candle and somewhere to boil up pots and pots of tea. The little personal knick-knacks, along the kind of lines of Sekhmet's post are probably the most important in getting the feel.
Although I like my consumer electronics, my iBook is the thing I'd take if I had to choose one. If not that, then many pens and paper.

21:04 / 27.10.04

My dad had a shed when I was a kid and I loved to go in there and smell the creosote, imagining how I'd grow up to be manly like him and keep a shedful of tools.

Haven't ever had a garden to put a shed in since then but I'd rather like one, on the Philip Pullman model, where I could go write my bestselling books.

In one dream, the shed's on an island off Sweden, all stripped and varnished wood and cunningly simple Scandinavian carpentry, with just an internet connection and shelves full of books, with only the pictures in Swedish.

In the other dream, more closely matched to the actuality of life in Xoc Towers, the shed has been occupied for centuries by adherents of a Kali cult and decorated accordingly. Only they all died one bitter Swedish Winter and I bought the shed at auction for a song and transported it to a location in St Anne's Churchyard, just off Queeer Street. Cleverly juxtaposed between the Hindu artwork and head shop geegaws, are piles of unwatched DVDs, a wind up Short Wave radio (for The Archers) and a small personal library, replenished weekly by Our Lady The Librarian.

The dusting is done daily by the Thai houseboys, who share my hammock, strung from the roof.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:09 / 27.10.04

Is it okay if I refer to my shed as a "compound"? It's just I have all these Koresh/Jones fantasies, and I'd like to carry them into my own little wooden, garden-located kingdom...

21:45 / 27.10.04

Oh, homebrew. I’d love to have a shed full of bottles of homebrew, all bubbling away and making fruity smells.

Actually, I’d really need a cellar for such a project. Can I have a cellar instead? Or a well insulated, warm shed, or a flimsy shed in a warm country, or maybe a shed with a cellar, if such a thing exists. Anyway, my dream ‘personal space’ has a constant temperature, suitable for fermenting booze. And some comfy chairs.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:47 / 27.10.04

Yeah, good point. Homebrew kit. For deffo.

22:00 / 27.10.04

A little home 'lab' to make lovely things out of plants I grow. Like a baby chemistry lab, but especially for making good, mind blowing concoctions.

Lots of books are included in my idealogical shed-plan, and of course there have to be two computers, one for sensible things and one for looking at filth. (I don't have this now, but I wish I did...)

There's a really good game which my beautiful man made up about this. Imagine you have a house as big as Longleat, like so:

Then what you have to do is equip every room. So obviously I would have a chemistry lab and a computer room. Last time I played this my son said he wanted a skateboarding room with a big pipe in, a room for 'big video' and a yellow slide which goes from the top floor down to the bottom.

Oooh. Maybe we should have a thread for what would go in your big house...

22:02 / 27.10.04

Shit, while we’re at it, maybe stick a greenhouse on the side of my shed? Grow a little pot, some tobacco, and exchange those comfy chairs I mentioned for some extra-comfy chairs instead. No sense in doing things by halves when you're building a compound.

Ah, I think there'd also be a need for a smallish ‘drying chamber’ in which to cure the tobacco. That’s okay. It’s a little cluster of outbuildings, no big deal. They’d all be part of the same personal space, really.

22:04 / 27.10.04

Ah, in fact, What Olula Said. That’s much better than my little greenhouse-and-chair combo.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:05 / 27.10.04

METHLAB! METHLAB!

Ahem.

22:15 / 27.10.04

Well, yes. Of course! Any half-decent compound has to produce something it can sell. Admittedly, I was thinking of free-range eggs or similar. But, I now realise that What Stoatie Said is also much better than anything I’d come up with. Gosh, yes. Methlab.

22:17 / 27.10.04

Methlab? METHLAB? methweedsalviamushroompeyotesanpedroayahuascaabsinthe is what I think you mean.

Surely?

22:25 / 27.10.04

Over the past few years my personal space has become redefined as "me and my Powerbook". I don't really have personal areas any more. My physical bodyspace and virtual space is it. I've become more sensitive to people being too close, getting in my way etc, and I'm very sensitive to people fucking with my computer since that constitutes a dwelling-place for me, but as for actual living environments, I'm happy whether I'm in a hotel room or a mansion. As long as I have the freedom to move around so that one particular place doesn't become too oppressive - say, go to a coffee shop with my Powerbook, or sit by the river.

I do quite like having non-Power books around though. And plants. My shed would probably therefore have a desk, a wireless router, a mouse, bookshelves, a comfy chair, and lots of plants - hanging baskets, rubber plants, window boxes, ivy up the walls. And big windows, ideally with an ever-changing view... can I put my shed on an airship?

Oh, and a minibar.

22:33 / 27.10.04

You can't put your shed on an airship Fridge, that's cheating.

22:40 / 27.10.04

Decommissioned aircraft carrier, perhaps. What with some of the substances being produced and refined in various barbe-sheds, I wonder if perhaps it'd be best to site them in international waters. I can see all these garden sheds clustered on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Pirate-style.

22:41 / 27.10.04

Okay, cameras on an airship, and big virtual windows that are actually plasma screens. Or just screens that grab random scenes from high-res webcams that I have placed around the world. Wouldn't be as good though.

What about a teleporting shed?

01:47 / 28.10.04

I think a teleport exit in some sense anyway Fridge, in case the authorities ever found out about all those *people*

07:51 / 28.10.04

Obviously the primary purpose of my shed-space would be starting a band - hence a lot of rock n' roll paraphenalia and grimy noise-making devices and a big experimental amplifier ala Marty's one in Back to the Future.

But then you knew that already.

And I'll chuck in a drug-lab too if there's room, although that seems to be pretty much a given.

08:34 / 28.10.04

I've always fancied a old style mad scientist's lair. Plenty of jacobs ladders, sparky things and those big throw switches. That and a table with a sheet thrown over it that I won't let anyone look under.
On a more practical level a shed must have a box full of different sized bits of wood and an assortment of string.

22:27 / 28.10.04

My shed must have a wine cellar filled with bottles of Pinotage and Merlot.

And a machine gun ever-ready for beseiging trolls.

And a supply of party poppers and Absolut for the annual, ceremonial visits of Stoatie on Moomintroll's birthday.