Quote of the weekend came from Khiem who said about the council
"I think I might just call them and tell them to write you a public apology to save themselves a world of pain"
I think he might be on to something there...
Here's what we saw when we turned up at Tower Bridge for the filming of the next Nokia advert yesterday.
A 50ft screen shaped like an arrow was hanging from a crane advertising Nokia maps.
I was scheduled to have the message
"Thanks to all the people who have sent post to my REAL wall. The council will never get us!"
Readers I need your help ASAP!
Yesterday I saw an advert which read
"Have a special announcement to make? We will make your message spectacular. Service is free of charge, first come first served"
I thought about it for about 2 seconds and picked up the phone. Having a chat with the boss of a large advertising company I talked them through my recent my REAL wall/council windup and said that the announcement I would like to make would be something like
"Sending postcards is not a crime - leave us post fans alone Hammersmith council!"
The guy liked the sound of it and has booked me in to film on Saturday.
The idea is that they are putting up a 50ft billboard somewhere in London to display this message.
I need to send them an appropriate message by the end of today, and thought I would open this one out to my readership.
So, what should the billboard say? Think my REAL wall. Think council. Think text message/twitter length wit.
And hurry up about it!
We made it into the paper! This screenshot comes from the online edition of this weeks Hammersmith and Kensington Times, where my REAL wall, yours truly and your postcards are the prominent headline on page 3.
Thanks for all your outstanding contributions and a new REAL wall featuring the paper to follow soon!
Do you hate going to your letterbox in the morning? Are you fed up with just receiving bills and adverts in the post? Has your facebook inbox become infinitely more interesting than your REAL inbox? Then you need this guide to getting started in REAL mail!
After closing my facebook account in February and trying to get my friends to revert to sending me REAL post for my REAL wall instead, it quickly became clear that not everyone is quite as enamoured with post as I am. Still desperate to receive some more interesting stuff in the mail, I decided that if my REAL friends weren't interested in sending me post then it must have been time to get a new set of friends!
The first step to take if you want to start receiving mail straight away, is the magnificent www.postcrossing.com. the idea of this site is very simple. When you sign up you have to send a postcard to a random member of the site with a reference number on it. When the receiver receives it, they will register the card on the site and you will get a nice message online from them and be in line to be the next recipient of a random card from somewhere else in the world. Beware this site is extremely addictive!
The next site you need to sign up for to make your mailbox sparkle a little is www.sendsomething.net. The site is very basic, but does a very simple task pretty well. You just register your name and address and what you are interested in, and then hit the Random Address button, and a profile will pop up with an address that you can send stuff to. This is a little like the Royal Mail Premium Bonds, in that you're not guaranteed to get anything most the time, but occasionally something will drop through the post and it really brightens up your day.
Remember that when you sign up for post sites like this it's good form to reply to messages and to send post. Keep the spirit alive by sending as well as receiving.
For more challenging mail try www.swap-bot.com. on this site, members arrange to swap all sorts of postal objects, from simple postcards to knitting, and photos and all manner of crafts.
Swap organisers arrange swaps with a certain number of people in, then assign partners and a deadline date that objects must be sent by. When items are received, members then rate each other and the swap coordinator and everyone recieves an item for every one sent. This is well worth checking out if you have some cool craft that you are in to, as you'll find people swapping all sorts of things and you'll discover there are some seriously talented people out there!
If you are artistic, try the mailart networks. The leading mailart site out there is www.iuoma-network.ning.com, which stands for International Union of Mailartists and is home to most of the worlds most creative mail geniuses. Go on there, make friends and start sending your art around the world. They say in mailart that senders receive, so the more mailart you put out the more you will get back and you find that after a while you can get a reputation if you are active.
To encourage more mailart, send out a mailart call, either on IUOMA or one of the numerous mailart websites like www.mail-art.de and post it on your own blog. Some examples of my own mailart calls can be seen on this blog and they were also put up on the previous 2 sites.
These are the main sites I use, as well as frequenting loads of blogs myself of mailartists and finding swap partners on twitter and flickr. There are networks out there of people swapping everything you can imagine, from knitting to chocolate, so with a little effort, google and some stamps you can change your postbox into something you really want to see in the mornings.
This came in yesterday from my local council, who must have noticed the large amount of mail coming in addressed to my REAL wall lately and decided that it must be a business.
They have now demanded that I pay business rates for waste disposal!
What they don't know is that I never throw any of your postcards away!
I was chatting to my girlfriend Elena last night and she said,
"According to the papers, girls think that 8 is the perfect size, but guys think girls prefer 12"
"Jesus!" I replied, not really having listened, "No guy has a cock that long!"
"I was talking about dress size" she sighed
I'm still getting used to not being a single guy as you can see...
My new mailart call is a tip of the hat to Sam Potts and the great Twitter on paper experiment.
I've decided to call for people's facebook statuses and twitter posts on a piece of paper or postcard to add to my REAL wall, to make a cool facebook type homepage, complete with really inane statuses.
As usual, all mail to be sent to the usual place
Andy Hoang
73b Goldhawk Road
London
W12 8EG
This gem was pimped by Ilona who is presently running a voodoo mailart call - I may send her mini-Andy and see if he can hang out with some mailart voodoo dolls in Germany for a while
