Proper placement of benches in public space?

Oh dear! Does no-one read my stuff? Put in temporary benches where you can to grow fenced off living ones nearby and the same with shelters.

When you buy friies and eat them walking down the street you want a bin in view when you finish. So you eat fries walking down the street and see where you are when you are finished. With benches folk want privacy (perceived), beauty, a bin again, some comfort, even a separate ashtray, sometimes called a potted plant in thoughtless schemes. (Like fire extinguishers can be the most expensive door stops in the world.) What are used are cold, pile inducing, wet cos the shelters suck, slatted metal street detritus examples that fit only in renderings with beautiful people and not many of them.

I bought an armchair once for the diner in my rooms. It had been damp where it was outside the furniture shop as it was an old chair someone had swapped for new. Beautiful pale lilac fungi sprouted from the wings that I couldn’t find in a book so once they wilted I cleaned the chair again with vinegar. After a couple of years the chair was relegated to the back alley where the Honda biker shop staff used it to smoke on when it wasn’t raining. Recently, I saw it again at the end of the alley in a kids den taking pride of place beneath a roof of pallet boards and cartons. Will it never go to the tip? Well our benches are instantly undesirable. They would be on a lorry in seconds if detached. There is nothing nice about them like chainsaw art of a tree stump, or select and civilised like a cheap wrought iron bench that only needs bolting down and painting occasionally. Nothing romantic or evocative like a simple limited garden swing or a single ply chair so famous for the Christine Keeler pose. Even gaudy carbon fibre toadstools keepkids quieter than a bum aching steel bar. If authorities are frightened that nice benches will be slept on by winos, or drunken office workers, leave the benches and service the community better. Oh, and where there is seating in the dry and out of the wind, Gods forbid, someone should wash and polish it every day or so, not just drive round on a sweeping machine with an mp3 implanted and an expression of stupid vacation. Sorry, rant over.

The photo is of a local thief using a commemorative park bench, The scheme is dear, many times the cost of a real bench to you and only guarantees exhibition for several years but, is so oversubscribed in nice areas and not so nice, it has become a boondoggle for authorities.

Luv n Lite and happy year of the tiger

Les Ballard – who has more cognac than coffee in his mug today

Jeepers, I remember this post! I can’t have had that much cognac lol.