I came stumbling out of the underground station, blinking in the bright blue skylit Trafalgar Square. I made my way toward the crowds that surrounded the fourth plinth. They look simultaneously baffled and entertained. As I made my way toward the fourth plinth, I was aware that it would be the end of this contestant's shift, as it was a quarter to one. This was just as well, because when I finally arrived, I saw a tall spindly bloke wearing a Grim Reaper or Death Head mask, with a long black overcoat and playing the ukelele. Badly. I know this because I was bequeathed with the gift of a ukelele a couple of years ago and I could elicit something resembling a tune after an hour with it. As I pondered this, the Grim Reaper let out a cry of some kind of repressed emotion and started smashing the ukelele up, in John Entwhistle fashion. As shards of ukelele threatened to puncture a pensioner's chest at the foot of the plinth, the Grim Reaper took out a long cylindrical object out of his ukelele case. It alarmingly looked like a telescopic shotgun. The fear of this eventuality was compounded by the fact that he started aiming it at people. In fact, the first person he levelled it at was me. "Fuck," I thought, "this is how I die? A trip down to London and my life will end because of a performance art installation. What the heck's my Humanist minister going to say at my funeral?".
This frightened train of thought then led me to have a real crisis of faith in what Anthony Gormley, the oneandother artist, was trying to do. The height of the fourth plinth makes it the perfect vantage point for an aggrieved sniper/terrorist/"banker going postal" to start picking random bystanders off. What if that actually happened though? Do they have to take the whole oneandother installation down before the 100 days has been completed? What happens to the funding? Alternatively, do they try and keep oneandother going, but have police marksmen rifles constantly aimed at the pedestal? In which case, who the fuck would want to go up and take part? Who in their right mind wants to dress up as Ziggy Stardust and start playing Bowie hits on the accordion with laser sights rippling up and down their pelvic area? As it happens, the telescopic sighted "shotgun" turned out to be an extremely long-lens camera and he was taking photos of his audience.
Plus, my frightened thoughts were slightly erased by the strange Grim Reaper fellow (or "grey alien", as I later identified the mask) being led off the plinth by a large crane and the 1pm slot started; a gentle-looking, silver-haired old lady in her 60s. She essentially just stood on the plinth and had little chats with various members of the public, as well as doing a little paint of watercolour painting. Something to tell the grandkids, I expect?
I took a break from the plinth to grab a bite to eat, as well as meeting Louise and helping her out by getting a few bits and pieces for her plinth stint. After helping her carry some of the tools she'd be using for her oneandother slot (about which, more later), she vanished into the Sky Arts makeshift studio. First of all, to get an interview with the producers there. And second of all, to meet Anthony Gormley. I didn't know about that latter point, until I got a text message from Louise telling me she'd met and chatted to the errant artist. To say my face went bright-green with envy would be an understatement. Random bystanders stood away from me because they thought I was radioactive.
The 3pm slot commenced, pre-Louise's 4pm starting time. A bloke with a ludicrous pink boater cap and a striped pink cricket blazer got up and started orating to the audience below, before beginning to loudly berate the bewildered bystanders with his faux angry poetry. This was admittedly the sort of person I'd initially expect to turn up on the plinth, a sort of cut-price reality show contestant. At one point, he began pontificating at length in a poem about Amy Winehouse, which referenced "carpet burns" and "binges", before concluding that he was her "libidinous soulmate". Well, I hope Amy was watching the Sky Arts live feed. If she was wanting a fling after her divorce from Mr Fielder-Civil, she could do no worse than a pink, poetry-pouting, pansy powderpuff. Actually, on reflection - no, she couldn't do worse. He rounded off his stand-up routine with a poem about a theoretical scenario on Bruce Springsteen writing a song about English cricket. Presumably, "The Boss" would've turned to this subject after he secured Obama's win in the Whitehouse and had given up songwriting about decadent Americanism. Oh, I tell a lie, he managed to fit in a final poem called "You're The Only One", which I suspect was his deeper foray into narcicism, although one of the poem's lines was "ignored of, in favour of stream of tweets". Could he see Twitter on my mobile and watch what I was doing while he was up there?
Finally, my dear friend Louise was up on the plinth after pink powderpuff balanced a cricket bat on his chin and was then quietly led off by the Sky Arts equivalent of the "men in white coats". I now felt a bit nervous for her. If she'd done it after the dear old lady, it wouldn't seem as being overshadowed. As it is, I thought the spectators would naturally expect a plinth successor to be more ostentatious than a preening pink pillock. Thankfully, the public appeared to cheer politely and chortled appreciatively when she unfurled her picnic blanket, followed by the reveal of some Pimms and assorted pastry products. The guy next to me wanted to know if she was going to streak and if not, why not? Hmmm, do I intervene, is the big question? No. Best to blend in quietly. He then muttered something about wanting to see her mammary glands - I'm paraphrasing him, obviously. I prepare myself to rugby tackle him. As luck would have it, I'm glad I held off, as he got bored and limped away. It looked like somebody had already greviously injured him!
After being the picture of model chic sophistication and smiling benignly at her picnic spread, she then unfolded a deckchair, sat in it and carried on casually chewing and being Bohemian. And followed it up by going for the populist vote. She started throwing free sweeties and chocolate out to the public. After a slow start, this magnaminous gesture caught the imagination way more than a ponce in a pink cricket top, spouting pretentious poetic piss. It also helped that, rather than harangue people around her, she just affected a rather knowing and mysterious smile. She would've given Mona Lisa a run for her money. Particularly if Leonardo da Vinci had painted the Mona Lisa with a green flowery blouse, a glass of Pimms and lemonade and a Halloween party pack for the kiddies. In fact, it goes without saying that the adult part of the crowd were trying to slowly slink away, but the children all loved her and used good old pester power to keep them there! A rather large gaggle of small human beings began congregating below her, with wonderment in their eyes. "FREE CONFECTIONARY!" screamed their tiny dilated pupils. The greedy little fuckers. Well, that's what you get when you engineer a stunt like that at the beginning of Summer holidays.
As I deduce that the British yoof have their morals dangling dangerously near the plughole, two of the little pricks start discussing construction of a waterbomb. "A lady, a LADY, NO LESS, offers you free sweets and chocolate, then you offer to blast her in the face with a polythene H2O grenade?" I felt like screaming at them. Then I readied myself in the rugby tackling position again. And then I stopped myself with either of those manoevers, as both of those seemed even more distasteful than attacking a wee bloke with a limp. And anyway, something far more interesting happened next, at about the fifty minute mark. A rather charming professional photographer offered his services to take photos of the plinth goings-on. This was just as well, as my planned meeting with a Twitter photographer cohort (going by the charming Twitter non de plume, RoxanneLaWin) was unable to make it due to unforseen circumstances. On top of that, the waterbomb boys were suddenly transfixed by me, due to them realising my proximity to the plinth lady. "You know her?" they asked, suddenly awestruck. Then my phone started bleeping left, right and centre, with mutual friends trying to get a mention on Sky Arts telly by Louise. But hey, I talk about that more in my producer-led highlights version of this blog. And you know all about that, don't you?
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