Text and Images by Sandshoe

The image (above) is a photo of the wire of an iron frame wire gate, modified by intensifying the colours, by cloning and re-pasteing onto it selected areas of the view through the wire to highlight the wire and converting the resultant image into interpretive forms using Photoshop.

In other words, folks who don’t know, I altered the original photo until I stopped on an image that ‘pleased’ me insofar as it illustrates the meaning (for me) in an abstract form that I derive out of the photo I started with.

Only short of the conversion of it into a kaleidoscopic form, I posted the photo of the gate wire this morning on a social network site I recently began to contribute to, blipfoto. For those who do not know about ‘blipping’, blipfoto allows a subscriber one photo a day. ‘Blippers’ sift through a daily diet of individual’s photos as they choose and comment in return. Try to upload a photo that was not taken within a recent time frame and the blipfoto programme will deny it entry. Assume a photograph from a few days ago will ‘do’ for today and the programme allocates it a position if you have one available on the calendar day the photo  was taken, if you hadn’t already uploaded one that day, and labels it ‘backdated’.

You cannot on any given day qualify for that day if you did not take a photo and you are asked to not fudge it.

Instructions are easy enough to follow, uploading a photo takes no time, the level of my subscription attracts no charge and some people write text to go with their photo.

Not very different from the pub really in some ways, blipfoto, except emphasis on the Pig’s here is not exclusively photography, does not ask for anything that is an identifier other than an email address, lacks some discipline as any self respecting pub does in Australia packed with writers and artists, the inspiration of causal and casual cooks and chefs and totally, talk.

Sometimes we turn up and sometimes we do not, who knows turn tail for a while or forever, barrack for the proprietor.

Writing and posting contributions on the wall of the front bar, the Pigs Arms, The Window Dresser’s Arms, Pig & Whistle does best. This ever changing exhibition happens according to how fast the next person’s expression of their eccentric inner self gets posted and the list of contributors cycles. That’s valuable work alongside, leastwise, housing Granny and her dubious brewing equipment, Foodge, Merv the Barman and the twins and their mother, the characters all who have developed within the walls – and allegedly leasing commercial space that is at present always available in the vacant rooms of the pub, its outlier buildings for more characters if they are thought of, more mythology such as has grown around the carpark and when the plumbing blocks ,the emergency long drop left over from when the night truck collected the excreta and council workers clanged cans on purpose underneath the guest wing.

The Hell’s Angles keep an eye on security, although Foodge is a Private Dick.

The older the history of the Pig’s Arms the more layers of the story are told,.

The contributions of the barflies and casual contributors are inside the folders on the RHS of the page. A commenter can jump in anywhere but if they want and comment and contribute to the story of the bar itself without following the trail. Gosh, it doesn’t take Einstein to understand the premise keeping these premises open 24/7 is home spun, feet on the ground brawlin’ and fightin’ and spittin’ and… wrong story line, sorry, I was reading the wrong instructions. I’m a copywriter. They paid me to…

They didn’t!

Sorry. I maintain a dedicated loose grip on the truth. No-one gets paid.

Truth, honest, Mike Jones regardless hasn’t been awarded the Order of Australia yet for the Pig’s Arms even though he made it to the cover of Rolling Stone …

He didn’t!  That was Seniors magazine!

… sent me an email a while back and suggested I send in a piece for the birthday party.  I’m onto it.

Happy Fourth Birthday, Pig’s Arms at The Window Dresser’s Arms, Pig & Whistle.