Erecting Heavenly's Chandeliers

I don't know whose idea it was to suspend Heavenly's glorious chandeliers on used scaffolding but Heavenly and I were both taken with it. Chris, neighbour and owner of the scaffold, was less entranced - in fact, quite bemused ... more so when we insisted we weren't going to clean off the rust and paint it. 'But is it art?' he questioned, not unreasonably. But I've worked at the Open University and recognise diversionary tactics when I encounter them. 'It's an installation, like Tracy Emin's bed' and so we gave it a title 'Decadence and Dereliction'. With the benefit of hindsight this may have been a mistake - early visitors thought they'd have to buy the whole thing. So we added a sign to say that each was for sale (may I add, at a very reasonable price).

The scaffold went up quite easily really, once we worked out how it all fitted together and Chris undertook some deep excavations in his garage to find its locking wheels. Then us girls (well, we were about a quarter of a century ago) set about the task of bedecking the scaffold poles with chandeliers, sleeves rolled up and proceeding in what I thought was a very professional manner.

Our next error was that we started from the bottom, occupying the space with these lustrous bijoux and undeterred by the resistant crystals that determined to escape their housings. We saved the biggest and boldest for last, to adorn the pinnacle. It was then that our mistake became apparent - how to get to the top?

A growing audience of neighbours watched agog as I slipped a ladder under the scaffold and followed it with my less than svelte frame. Pivoted atop this structure and with heart beating fast I instructed Heavenly, no stranger to the gym, to 'clean and press' the more elaborate articles over the top of the poles so that I could receive and attach them to butchers hooks. It was at the point of attachment that Heavenly innocently asked "have you ever seen that episode of Only Fools and Horses?"

The installation looks great though - visit my website for a snippet. And the orange tint we emerged with (rust, not fake tan) eventually washed off.