Editorial

I’ve been dwelling on a video clip I uploaded to the DEMM Facebook page showing the man casually strolling across the scaffolding as if he were on the footpath instead of hundreds of metres above the ground. It makes my stomach flip just to watch it. Several years ago, bamboo scaffolding was used for a house being built at the top of my street. I’d never seen that outside of Hong Kong. It looked rather avant-garde, actually. One stormy day it rocked back and forward but the painters simply moved with it. Maybe the wind did all the work for them – they simply held the end of a brush and the wind pushed the bristles across. The other place I was aware of scaffolding as an art form was at the Pop Up Globe. As I waited for the grand entrance of my thespian nephew I noticed how articulate the arrangement was. It was both intriguing and pleasing how it went together just so. The Eiffel Tower is considered the biggest piece of scaffolding in the world and you would have to be a Philistine not to see the beauty in that structure. It is ironic that when it was built, it was surrounded by wooden scaffolding. Although steel was considered for the Tower, which would be the biggest building in the world for over 40 years, it wasn’t even considered as suitable for scaffolding. It would have made quite a visual statement, though, the steel rising through the wood. Which reminds me, I have my Father’s metal Meccano in its hinged wooden box. Maybe I can construct my own statement.