Best Laid Plans

Today

I've just come home from a weekend in Chichester. It's a pleasant easy-going city with a very interesting cathedral.

"I haven't been here for forty years", I commented to my companion. "Not since I was at art college."

In My Day

Between 1967 and 1970 I was a theatre design student at the Worthing College of Art and Design. Part of our training was in the making of scale models.

In late 1969 we were given a project to design a set for "Everyman" using the main aisle of Chichester Cathedral as a backdrop.

To do this we travelled over to Chichester and set about taking measurements of the aisle, the pillars, the steps up to the choir and through to the reredos.

We sketched the carvings and ornamentations. Then back to college to turn the measurements into accurate plans using the whole panoply of technical instruments. 

Then we were expected to produce a balsa wood and card scale model and add our set, also in scale, in its right place on the model. I doubt whether I came up with a breathtaking new insight into "Everyman". However, always one to do things at the last minute, I set about making my model in an exhausting all-night sitting the day before the deadline. At last I was done! I glued the final piece into place and stood back to admire my work. A quick check with my original drawing revealed the horrid truth: I'd done the whole thing back to front. Was this the insight I was looking for?

It was much to late to do anything; the glue was well stuck and I had about an hour to get into college and present my work. I think I carried the model on the bus and can't now remember whether anyone at college noticed my error or, indeed, what mark I received for it. 

It was a very accurate and neat mirror image model though, and I still know how to make a scale plan. I haven't found that this hard-won skill has stood  me in much stead through my adult life.