As I have this picture in my hall (as do many others!) I was interested to see that Pedlars have turned it into a tea towel too.

Carry on troops!

I’d love to live in a Span House. When I say that a lot of people go, “Huh? What’s one of them?”

Parkleys, Ham - Photograph by Tim Crocker

Span Houses were the brainchild of architect Eric Lyons OBE (1912–1980). Built after WWII (almost entirely by Span Developments Ltd.), Lyons aim was to provide affordable well designed family housing situated in a landscaped environment that fostered the idea community living. Together with fellow architect Geoffrey Townsend, and landscape architects Ivor Cunningham and Michael Brown, Eric Lyons created a set of houses that introduced European Modernism to the masses.

Examples of Span House estates include New Ash Green in Kent, Templemere in Surrey and numerous parts of the Cator Estate in Blackheath .

New Ash Green, Kent - Photograph by Tim Crocker

Today these aims and the houses that embody them are just as desirable. They are sustainable, modern, community-spirited, light filled, open plan and are just great looking places to live. Unfortunately, a lot of other design minded individuals think so too so they aren’t as affordable as they were in the 1950s and 1960s!

Last year RIBA had an exhibition that we missed on Span Houses and their creator Eric Lyons. It was just after we bought this place, so we were probably a little distracted at the time. Never mind, a lovely book of the exhibition was produced and on the RIBAPix website there is a whole gallery of wonderful black and white photographs of Span in all their modernist glory. Tim Crocker also has a beautiful gallery of Span photographs in colour. Resident of New Ash Green, Patrick Ellard, and James Strike of Fieldend, Twickenham have both written articles and books on Span from a residents perspective.

If you have a recent Lottery win burning a hole in your pocket I’d suggest looking at The Modern House estate agent site. It has examples of some of the best modernist houses in the UK for sale. I drool. This one in particular in Blackheath really is a gorgeous example of Span housing.

Brooklands Park, Blackheath

Oh, well I’d better push off to buy that Lottery ticket.

A funny design genius.

Any man who can have this on his website* is OK by me:

“We believe that when it comes to decorating, the wife is always right.
Unless the husband is gay. “

I think I might have to buy his book, ‘My Prescription for Anti-Depressive Living’.

*His online store delivers internationally too, not that I am encouraging you or anything.

So, Bank Holidays. It’s tradition in Britain to do either one of two things. Spend the entire weekend in a traffic jam on the clogged A303 to Cornwall or spend it in a traffic jam on the way to or back from the DIY centre.

We were canny and did neither, we stocked up on DIY supplies before the weekend and set about several projects.

When we weren’t fighting the Great Fox War of 2007 we found time to:

1. Dismantle the hideous railing around our front door, sans angle grinder (the strength of M is now legendary in these parts). The little old lady who owned the flat before us had an ugly concrete ramp and scaffold pole railings constructed around her front door as she must of been a wheelchair user. Or so we assume. The council don’t seem to know who put it there, if permission was given or if it even exists. We have therefore taken the executive decision to get rid. Hopefully we can smash the ugly ramp up soon with a pick-axe and return the entrance of our flat to it’s original state.

2. Filled holes in exterior wall and door left behind by removal of aforementioned railings.

3. Started painting bedroom white. The one large wall we have done so far had so many patches of preparatory filler on it before we could paint (to try to smooth it’s impossibly scarred surface) it looked like it had a pox. Where the previous tenants knife throwers perchance? Next wall needs yet more filling and a good scrub with mould killer. A poorly ventilated room at the best of times the students who lived here before never had the heating on… hence mould on the end wall of the property. Such is the joy of living in a room you are painting, one wall at a time does it while your furniture does the DIY musical chairs dance.

4. Created a garden! Well, not really, just a balcony but it’s green. We bought lavender, two clematis, two cordylines, sage, cherry tomatoes, rosemary, basil, mint (mmm Pimms!) and some cut and come again salad leaf seeds. The balcony is now tastefully green ‘netted’ to the handrail height to prevent foxes and cats getting in (we are obviously on the ground floor) and to provide a medium for the clematis to grow up. More netting is on one wall for the tomatoes to grow along and we’ve put white shelves above that for the potted herbs to sit on. It looks lovely! My cut and come again salads have sprouted on my kitchen window sill and I have even taken some cuttings from one of the bushes in the garden to try and cover a bare patch the other side of our balcony which ‘exposes’ our flat a bit. After one failed attempt (the dreaded wilt) I have had success with the cuttings mark II (plastic bags are your friends, cuttings need high humidity) and I hope for lusty bushes of greenery shortly. My next plan is to propagate some holly.

Latest eBay find found it’s way home last weekend. Not sure why I wanted one but I did and it looks brilliant: a 1932 Imperial Good Companion typewriter. It is magnificent in its machine aesthetic. Minty matte black with yellow keys that you have to really whack to get a good embossed print. No touch typing here! By coincidence I watched a programme recently on BBC Four in their Edwardian season -  ‘Throughly Modern: The Typrewriter’ - on the same subject. At the end of the programme the narrator said young hipsters were now turning their backs on modern technology and could increasingly be found seeking out alternative cafés where they could use traditional manual type to craft letters and works of art. I turned to M and said “Wow, I must be a hipster, I’ve just bought one  of those on eBay.”

… and not enough of it.

Writing essays this week and next so not much posting.

You’ll be pleased to hear my print addiction continues a pace (thank you Etsy) and this weekend we start to paint over the dire ‘urine yellow’ colour walls in the bedroom with fresh clean white eggshell undercoat.

When my projects are done I promise some pictures of the flat, our painting, DIY capers and our hung prints - this site is looking bare!

We are also thinking of hiring - for some traditional bank holiday DIY - an angle grinder. Watch out neighbourhood…