Let’s get graphic
(View of the hallway in my mum’s house: Carlisle, England)
It’s amazing what a person can become used to over a very short time, I never realise the fact until another person points it out. In China I became accustomed to the construction sites surrounding us all the time, switching the kitchen light off from the bedroom and riding an electric bike around town, only to remember that I could do none of these the UK. One such realisation is that I have ceased to notice that my mother’s entire hallway is decorated with coloured marker – and has been for some months now. She held a graffiti party in the house and invited a bunch of friends round to deface her property in a most alarming manner.
Even my mother thought that by early 2011, she would have called decorators in to strip the now ailing and grubby wallpaper and replacing it with something decidedly more modern and smart. It was a pipe dream of my mum’s to host a graffiti party years ago but she never got around to it. The whole point was to basically enjoy ruining the existing décor and thus encourage it’s speedy replacement – my sense of impulsive fun was developed at an early age and nurtured in different ways by both parents. Anyway, in the meantime, the state of the wallpaper reached a point where repainting was not an option, so there was nothing to stop us vandalising the walls with markers. In the end, there were possibly twenty people attending the party –including Ying and I and a couple of our friends. There were adults and children all armed with pens and footstools, vying for the best position for their scrawl.
There are some highlights; A totum pole, a portrait of David Hasselhof on the Berlin wall, two animal heads (the pig is visible on the left). Mum drew a magical door leading to the outside, Ying and I created an eight foot high doctor with arms just as lengthy in a white coat next to the front door (I was balanced on his shoulders to achieve the feat), Ellie drew a collection of plants on the wall above a shelf, Hamish was responsible for a set of framed portraits, Ying for a series of annotations on everyone’s work and a family friend drew the massive hull of a ship, complete with figurehead at the vestibule. There were many other notations, proverbs and images scribbled all over the walls, but I have almost stopped seeing them. My Gran however could be seen shaking her head at New Year, both baffled and vaguely disapproving of the entire showcase. Of course, I think it is utterly hilarious and I fully anticipate it will still be there in the summer unless my mother has a sudden change of heart.* The designs have become part of the fabric of ‘home home’ now and I will notice (and sorely miss) them by their absence when they disappear. I am currently looking into creating a small gallery of the images – so stay tuned.
*However, since my mother and I spent almost an hour today documenting every single inch of the ‘cave paintings’, we can now bid them adieu without missing them too badly.
– Today Rosie is returning to Glasgow and will be back ‘in the office’ in Glasgow, Scotland –
