These guys are waiting for a natural beauty. They are from a special tribe of caterpillars which specialises in being organic jewellery for local beauties who have a special occasion they need to look pretty for. They descended like this in my path as they could tell from a distance that I don’t wear make up, however, when I got close they said I was too much of a slovenly filthy bucket in my grease stained jogging bottoms to waste their time with me. (I’ve since bought an apron in anticipation of encountering them again.) As such, these caterpillars are probably still just hanging about, waiting for a local lovely. So if you are one, I commend thee to high tail it down to the North Downs Way, just outside of Old Wives Lees. Once the caterpillars spy you, they will turn from being a path pendant into some kind of
On this sofa bed, a Monst was made. Not via procreation, you understand, but made nonetheless. His principal constituents are: assorted Meccano and Lego pieces, three indeterminable bones, two pieces of Scalextric track, several pieces of the board game Operation, one Rice Crispy treat, and a very powerful spell. The Monst’s name is Barry and, when he’s not out roaming Lypeat and Clowes wood, he lives under this same bed. Barry the Monst was made by a six year old boy called Nigel, but neither Barry nor Nigel know that. By the time Nigel’s prodigious spell had finished working, Nigel had long since gone home to bed. The over-early moral of this story then, is to take care with the wishes that you make. Coming into the world alone like that, means that poor old Barry has a gaping void where his maker should be. So, he wanders the local connected
They say ‘history repeats itself’ and it does, of course. I’ve got a PhD in history, so you can trust that I know what I am talking about. Anyway, this tree is actually a very old tree and it has lived through a time which in some ways resembles the one we have now. Be prepared then reader, for this is a cautionary tale. The reason this tree on Linchmere Common is bendy, is because during its lifetime the sun disappeared. As such, the tree, not having eyeballs to see, just gradually reoriented itself to a second source of power and energy: the molten core of the earth. When the sun came back, the tree turned upwards again to the original, greater source of energy. It’s stayed growing that way for some time now, but I have it on good authority that it may well have to make another turn soon.
This is a portrait of Stick Boy, when he was alive and happy, frolicking and running in the forest. The pines of Holmbury Hill have memorialised him so that he could finally realise his dream of being one of them. Alive, organic, free. Stick Boy came to the forest at some point in the future. He was born in a time when IVF meant placing an AI into the body of a robot. An AI you got made to the have the perfect personality; a robot body which never got hurt or decayed, so long as you oiled it and kept it out of the rain. Stick Boy’s human parents ended up being a sorrow. No matter how perfect Stick Boy was, he still wasn’t good enough to end the arguments which raged between the two adults. No matter how many science projects and paintings he created, he could never be
This is Gilbert & Sons, they are a travelling players group. Unlike other plants, these guys don’t exude oxygen but joy. As you can tell from their happy upright gesturing, they want you to pay attention, because the more attention you pay, the closer you’ll get to joy. Literally and figuratively. Gilbert & Sons are actually what happens to some lifeforms who achieve liberation from suffering. A liberation which, judging by my response to the non-stop electric sander somewhere outside, I’m still a long way off achieving. In this play, Gilbert & Sons are demonstrating the maxim that “all things can be found in miniature”. It is an exhortation to pay attention to the small in order to dwell in the large. As you can see, Gilbert & Sons are trees, the feather moss is playing bracken, and the twig is doing a great job of acting as an ancient, fallen