... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Saturday, November 23, 2013

George Clarke's Amazing Spaces is my favourite 'non-scripted' TV show now that Inside Nature's Giants isn't on any more. ING's excursions into the anatomy and environments of some of the wonderful creatures that evolution has thrown up. Advances and mistakes. The most beautiful illustration of evolutionary errors comes when we open up the giraffe's neck and see the pointless 15 foot detour of the recurrent laryngeal nerve.

GCAS's ingenious appropriations of knackered buses, milk floats, canal barges, treetops, caravans and garden sheds. In S01E01 the young architect who has turned an underground Victorian public convenience into a beautiful home for herself. All the creatives who have built wonderful little money spinners, or home studios in their gardens, or tiny holiday homes on wheels, how I envy them, their skill and hard work. I want to be like them.

A beached whale. Let Mark Evans and Joy Reidenberg have their ways with it, wielding dissection blades and TV cameras, pulling out entrails and laying them out on the grass, mouth to anus, slitting open the stomach and the guts to inspect and weigh the contents. Hollow out the torso. Break open the head to view and manipulate the vocal apparatus. Turn over the redundant cetacean space to me and my friend Thompson, the adept handyman, to convert to a stunning compact seaside residence.

Enter the mouth into a surprisingly bright and airy living space. The side folds down and the flipper can be utilised as a balcony/decking area, perfect for picnicking on the beach with the need to step down into the sand. A wood burning stove keeps the place warm on cold nights, the whales blow-hole makes the perfect exit point for the flue. And of course at the back end, the shower room and toilet. The whales own watertight sphincter is repurposed to let gas and water in, via pipes leading from storage tanks concealed outside.

As yet undecided, to let out the converted whale to paying customers or to move into the space myself and lead a basic idyll of a life, digging for razor clams and jogging barefoot on the sand.

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