November, 2016 - Ina Disguise

More unemployed Furniture! The Conservative way!

Over the weekend, I have acquired another twenty one unemployed items of furniture, and another three items that I already have lurking in the studio require my attention. This is turning into quite a production line. My garden currently looks as if I am about to host a conference.

I now need another thousand pounds or so of materials in order to give the starving hoardes what they need to get back to work. This is turning into a production line, which is a new concept, considering the length of time I give every piece I make.

I could raid my savings, but I think this is a bad idea, so I am sorting through my wool stock to see if I can dredge up another thousand pounds worth of stuff to sell to pay for the new materials. I am an absolute skinflint, but this usually means I can do what I set out to do without having to borrow anything.

My friend has appeared to lend a hand, and so everything should move a bit faster. Basically the sewing is now going to have to move entirely to my bedroom, and the studio will now have to be given over entirely to the furniture.

Short term, the collections are now Sheep in wolf’s clothing, Jazz, and Beach, classified by the existing carpets, which take the longest. For each major carpet, I will be creating a chair, table, lamp, footstool, box and probably some cushions and mirrors/wall art. Thereafter the idea is that I present the Ina Disguise concept in style groupings, which should make more sense of my uncompromising attitude to design. My heartfelt thanks to Boris, I seem to be a bit more practical and mercurial than I was when it was a simple compulsion.

So tomorrow I will dismantle the conference facilities in my garden, dismantle the studio and bring all the wool up to my bedroom for sorting, the studio will house the furniture and furniture materials, and I will have to look through what remains to find out which bits need to be smashed, which bits can be sold, and generally clean up the dust from the work so far. Then we will be cleaning the first pieces, moving the gaudi chair, which is a very old piece of work into the house for cleaning, moving the items which have been sitting in the studio awaiting my donating them to charity into my office area for selling off to pay for materials. I do miss my shoes, however. Life is better with shoes.

Now I am sure a considerable number of people will think that given that I take care of a very time consuming old lady and a giant property, that I am quite insane for putting this much work into creating more work for myself, but after the experience of the last twenty years or so, I think my future lies in directions other than unemployment and miserable penury followed by death.

Ultimately, I think the games will make more of a living, but in the meantime, making some funky entertaining grown up toy furniture to entertain the FT and Tatler readers sounds like a plan. I do need money for this angle however, which is proving to be a bit of a hurdle at the moment.

Boris the Conservative Muse

First of all, sorry about the lack of posts. I was a bit upset at the whole survey debacle. I had hoped that Scotland had grown out of the divisive poor self image crap that has led, on a personal basis to my being unemployable because I work too hard, and on a national basis, to a bunch of sheep playing follow my leader instead of developing their own political ideas. In addition, twitter decided to block the website, and so it was not really possible to do anything with the site until they actually read their emails.

I cannot see this being successful for the future, and so I choose to simply opt out of the argument. I was posting pro independence posts for long enough before I did the survey, and the response was overwhelmingly negative on both sides. In short, Scotland is a bit fail, and this is unlikely to change within my lifetime.

It is an interesting process, developing the ina disguise concept for a different person, who has this time been deliberately selected rather than the usual involuntary process. For Boris I have taken a small crowd of unemployed furniture, and rather than starving or threatening it, which would not have worked at all, I have invested time and money in it. (rather a lot of money, I had to sell my back up computers and shoes, amongst other things, to pay for the materials, some of which had to be imported from India)

I am sure any conservative would be delighted that my artwork has never cost anybody else anything. I spent the early part of my life overworking, avoiding having a social life and buying materials. I now have two rooms full of materials and tools, and because I cannot leave the house due to caring for my mother and her property 24/7, I now have time to do something with them. They will also be delighted to hear that we cannot access any of the services we are entitled to, as our local council is so corrupt that they openly admit to gunning for your house and savings if you try to use anything. Basically the only way around this is to not save anything in the course of your life.

Anyway, the Boris development is going to expand the existing threads to the work, so the Boris Experience, as such, has not really started yet. I do like the new ideas and confidence, however. Time will tell if this is a good development.

I did write about fear of status loss being a factor in people’s votes for independence. I have been chewing this over, since it is something I know rather a lot about. A good part of my family’s behaviour towards me and their mother was about status anxiety. I had a frankly crap, and certainly cheap education in comparison to them, and I am the most qualified person in the family.

It seems to me that status is a very destructive thing, to gain and to fear losing. It leads to irrational and poor behaviour towards others. Class is not the problem, money is not the problem. Status, real or imaginary, is the problem. If we start to say ‘fuck status’ where does that leave us?

Probably a lot happier, and certainly more open to new ideas than the miserable people I have had the misfortune to deal with.

I am in Tatler for the December issue, not in person of course. I am sure they will be delighted to have the Boris experience next year.