I can only assume that the planets are coming into alignment for id-iom as whilst we’ve been back home for the TT we’ve also been in discussions with various local luminaries in order to secure any wall spaces to paint and we finally triumphed in the face of adversity. So, when we finally managed to wrangle permission to paint a big wall down a tired and somewhat unloved passageway in central Douglas which is officially called ‘Guttery Gables’ (although there are many more colourful local names for the lane which are probably best not mentioned here) we thought we’d best act swiftly before they realised what they’d let themselves in for.
After being granted permission on Saturday we decided that we should paint as soon as possible and so set ourselves the deadline of painting on Monday and so had just a couple of days to come up with a design and make the necessary preparations. The space is perfectly positioned so you see the wall directly ahead of you when you enter the alley so we needed to come up with something that had a big impact and brought some colour to an otherwise nondescript back alley.
After much deliberation we finally hit on Oscar Wilde’s quote from ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’:
‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars’
The quote seemed pretty fitting considering the alley’s name and once we’d combined that with the gargantuan face of a young lady with stars in her eyes we had just about what we were aiming for. After adding a few triskeles to give it that Manx touch and an Oscar Wilde tag to attribute the quote we were good to pack up and move on. Big thanks to Charles for helping us out with this one…
Cheers
id-iom
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