Backdoor bees

Farmyard Radio sadly failed to transmit from a distant yard this week - the beautiful farms of Nanlin, Gwandong province of southern China where director Adam is shepherding artists for the 'Happy Stacking' project.
The great Fire Wall of China got in the way Dorian suspects...

See the Happy Stacking project website to see what we're up to uncensored.

We'll be taking a break from the mike today as everyone's at a GA Board meeting and you wouldn't want us to broadcast that.
On the plus side the arrival of a new mixer and mikes means you'll notice a massive audio quality upswing next week though of course the content will remain just as bad.
A bientot!

Adam, Alistair and Lisa talk about the unseasonably cold weather, how the pick up lost its wheel and what it is like to hitch hike in the Lake District. Other hot topics will include the progress of the drilling crew and other building works. Delicate issues like why the A Foundation wont pay up and why the Chinese Embassy has declined Adam's visa application will be skirted round.

Go Alistair

Alistair does dynamic as he wrestles with the Box of Kurt Schwitters over in Langdale. The site is the garden in which Schwitters made his Cumbrian Mertz barn (funded by New York MoMA), now in the ownership of Littoral - an arts agency based in Lancashire. They are bringing the buildings, garden and Mertz barn back into use as a research/education centre. We are planting some of the Box as one of those urban place signs

The Great Table of Cumbria

Oh boy, what a table, the conference table at the Malcolm Wilson Rally Headquarters in Cumbria. I was at a meeting there, something called Culture Cumbria - I know a contradiction in terms, but.

The venue was supposed to illustrate the great things of Cumbria, this mighty table must be one of them. The whole place was a kind of heart of Darkness experience, plastic trophies everywhere and a racing driver wife sensibility throughout married to this manly beast of design excellence. Looks like the kind of thing that a man that does all his Christmas shopping in Halfords would come up with, 'what's wrong with a steering wheel cover, an ideal ladies gift'.

The meeting did its usual Cumbria centric fanfare of self importance we were told that the Kendal Mountain Film Festival was the most diverse film festival in Europe, thats a film festival centred around one screen over a weekend, blows Edinburgh and London outta the water, The clue to the falseness of this statement is in the title of the festival - Mountain Films, not really leading in terms of diversity being mostly about mountains. Other great things we have include the largest outdoor art festival in Europe, all run on a budget of 30k - Munster shmunster. I could go on, but it really is too embarrassing.

Adam, Alistair and US visitor Cory Kromm (he's an architect) and Craig Sturrock (he's a soil specialist) talk about Architecture, Golf and Fungi as the saviour of the world - thats fungi not golf or architecture.

Adam and Alistair just talking for an hour, no guests, jeez.

Adam and Lisa talking about the Collection, the building and stuff

The over zealous apprentice was apparently killed for overdoing it with this column and is buried under it

When Ruskin was in charge of the Oxford museum, he, following his own doctrine that the architect should have practical skills - insisted on building one of the columns himself. It was later rebuilt by the builder. I feel a column coming on.