Bless the Brits. If there is one thing you can depend upon, is their glorious eccentricity. Searching for such, look no further than the back of the garden. There dwells the not-so-humble shed.
Transformed into a shelter of solace, it has inspired the ‘Shed of the Year’ competition. Sponsored by Cuprinol the wood preservatives people from ICI Paints it is now entering its eighth year. A survey by Cuprinol revealed even more that is weird and wonderful about those peculiar people known as ‘sheddies’ and their retreats.
More than a third of the 14 million sheds in Britain are wired for electricity. This comes in handy for operating a television set, which seven percent of sheddies admit to having. Some 20 percent admit to hiding out in their sheds to avoid their partners. Half of those also admit to concealing unhealthy snacks and almost as many to hide cigarettes. Four percent keep love letters from an ex-partner there while eleven percent use their sheds to make secret phone calls.
You think these are odd? Cuprinol’s survey of 1,500 Brits suggests they have skeletons in the closets or, in at least one case, a human skeleton in their shed along with relative’s ashes. These fit in with other unusual items such as a grave stone, old breast implants, a camel’s head, a tattoo gun and photographs of a former partner.
Then there are the names they give to them. Inevitably there have been – and may still be – Star Wars inspired shelters: ‘Jabba the Hut’ and ‘Return of the Sheddi’ while the ‘Warp Speed Shed’ presumably has travelled where no man has gone before. ‘Big Kev’s Pipe-Puffing Palace’ and ‘Dirty Bobby’s Love Cabin’ would seem to indicate uses other than storage of garden tools and equipment.
This being Britain, one of the categories is for pubs. Those longing for days long gone by have chosen evocative names. Amongst them may be found the Stagger Inn, Barstard, The O’Jaysus, The 19th Hole, FrogNCat, The Plum Tree Arms and 3 Steps Bar. It is suspected that gardening is not exactly what their creators had in mind . . . Nor those claimed to have been made for fairies or one evoking a Moroccan retreat.
All of which makes you wonder just how much money are these people willing to put out? Apparently in Northern Ireland they spend the most on their sheds: £658.70. By comparison, East Midlanders are downright stingy, spending just £188.85 per shed and only £57 doing it up.
Some though spend considerably more. And it is not just a masculine thing. We don’t know how much the doubtlessly proud owners of Bostin Betty or Dawn’s Den spent, but Manjit Didhu, 37, lives on Solihull with her 16-year-old daughter, admits to spending £5,000 on hers but “it’s worth every penny.” Anne Bate, 46, who lives in St Helens, Merseyside, has spent £10,000 on recreating a ‘50s diner complete with juke box, popcorn maker and light-up petrol pump.
Entries for the
2014 Garden Shed of the Year competition, closed in early May. Winning entries are announced in June. Britain celebrates National Shed Week the first week in July.
Only in Britain you say? Pity
