If At First You Don't Succeed...

Just down the road from the wicker ladies, in a field packed full of arts and crafts stores and workshops, was this fine looking construction of a robot. Well there should have been if it wasn’t for pesky lens cap. Stood By his Robot is SwissToni, who gives it a great bit of robotics, right down to replicating the robot’s red cloth, which he imitates with his red Santa hat.

Have no fear readers, for Swiss and I headed back to the robot a couple of days later to get a better shot.



Don’t you hate it when that happens?



On the third take, we did finally get some sort of a resemblance to man imitating robot.

Only later to find out later that friend Laura had made a far superior effort at another time!

A Woeful Wicker Endeavour…

Blimmin’ lens caps.

I took this snap on the Friday of the festival and found out around 24 hours later that my lens cap had been playing silly buggers on me! Or maybe it was the pear cider?

First of all, my humble apologies to the three lovely female companions who took the time from their hectic festival schedules to stand by their fantastic wicker lady statues. From left to right we have: Caitlin (stood next to the wicker lady with her head cut off), Emma C (whom probably profits the most from the lens cap incident by standing in the middle, but who kind of misses out on this great opportunity by getting the imitation spot on in all aspects, bar the direction in which the statue is looking), and, finally, stood to the right we have Kate……..ahem…….although we should do, if the lens cap hadn’t got stuck and totally blacked her out.

So, erm, yes, most apologies to Kate, who stood by and imitated her wicker statue, more than likely in front of several bemused onlookers, for no apparent benefit!

Anyhoo, the wicker statues also resided in the green fields at Glastonbury, and chances are that they would have been burned at some stage near the end of the festival. Good job we were able to picture some of the evidence eh?!

Oh, and I should probably warn you that this wasn’t the first photo mishap of the festie. More coming soon…

Glasto Greatness...

I was one of the fortunate few who managed to get a ticket to the Glastonbury Festival this weekend just gone. It is the best music festival here in the UK, probably the world, and has been making people very happy for the last 35 years now. This years experience was quite a wet and muddy affair, as some of Swisstoni’s photos testify, but it was the usual mad and magical few days, and I would be surprised to see that Glasto isn’t my best weekend of the year, as it has been for the last few.

Anyways, although the festival features a multitude of stellar bands spread over a huge amount of stages (a few of the highlights for me this year included New Order, The Las, Coldplay, Brian Wilson, Basement Jaxx), what makes Glasto special is the huge area known as the Green Fields, which features a mixture of craft workshops, a Greenpeace field, a Tipi field. It also contains many artists and sculptors plying their trade. As part of my trade, I took the opportunity to stand by some of the sculptures during the festival, and shall publish a few of these (mixed!) results over the next few days…

Tonight’s sculpture is located in the Kings Meadow field located right at the top of the site, and is known as the sacred space. Basically, it’s a huge great Dragon, and not the first one I’ve stood by either!

We've Got The Big Guns...

Unfortunately, Stand By Your Statue is heading off on his hols for a week tomorrow, but, as a treat, tonight we publish this photo of a huge big gun! Located somewhere around Red Square in Moscow, the gun is almost certainly one of the biggest guns in the world. Stood By His Big Gun is housemate John. If you look near the wheels of the gun there is actually a fairly large lions head, which John could well be imitating, although it could equally be said that John is, quite simply, doing his finest impression of a huge big gun. I’ll let you decide…

As I have mentioned, I am going to be away for the next week (in a lovely part of the Somerset countryside) but, rest assured, I shall be taking the old camera in order to take the statue photos that need to be taken! I think there could well be a few bizarre stand by your statue moments to look forward to following this trip.

If you have any beautiful photos of people stood by their statues then please please send them to me. My email address can be found in my profile in the top left hand corner of the site…

In the meantime, I hope you all have lovely week…

Hail Mrs Mac!

My apologies for confusing a statue giant great naked man with Julius Caesar a couple of days ago. Even more so because tonight I publish a photo of Mrs Mac stood alongside someone who suspiciously looks a bit more like Julius Caesar! A toga-tastic hailing effort by Mrs Mac it has to be said, and another fine Vegas statue…

We Have All The Time...

Unfortunately, Statue John is a little guilty of drinking a few too many ales this evening, and is therefore not coherant enough to post a proper piece of statue imitation.

We have all the time in the world to do that though. This statue of the late great Louis Armstrong, located in Armstrong park in downtown New Orleans, was a just a little bit too classy to imitate...

Vegas Baby...

I am going to embarrass the Ultimate Olympian a little more this evening by posting this photo of his dad stood by a gigantic 20 foot naked man!

This can only mean one thing. We have arrived at the pleasure dome that is Las Vegas. I have never visited this city, but I’d imagine it would be a great pace to visit purely due to the fact that you could walk around shouting ‘Vegas Baby!’ repeatedly. I think this statue is actually a 20-foot Caesar extending his hand of welcome to Caesars Palace. Looking delighted at being Stood By His Caesar, we welcome Mr Rollo McClure into the Stand By Your Statue archives.

I have a feeling that Vegas Baby! will bear much fruit in terms of pictures of statues and people standing by them over the coming months…

Maritime Magic...

Continuing with Mrs Mac’s odyssey along the west coast of the United States, tonight’s Stand By Your Statue moment is bought to you by the Lone Sailor Memorial, which is located by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and was erected to pay respect to all the US sailors who have sailed under the bridge away on national service.

Stepping up to the portside, Mrs Mac provides a fine replication here with collars up and sailors hat on.

Reach For The Stars...

It gives me great pleasure this evening to introduce you to the magnificent Mrs Mac, mom to the Ultimate Olympian. On a recent trip to San Francisco and Las Vegas, Mrs M took much time out from her holidays to track down some statues for us, so I am delighted to share these with you over the next few days…

Mrs Mac also found time to display one of her legendary cavalier dancing moves while imitating this statue in San Francisco in Washington Park, which was erected in 1932 as a tribute to the city's fire fighters.

Just Like Joe...

Continuing with the baseball theme, we remain at Yankee Stadium this evening. At the far side of the pitch is the New York Yankees hall of fame, where they place plaques for the greatest players at the club. Now I don’t know much about baseball in general, but I do know that Joe DiMaggio (a.k.a. the Yankee Clipper) is one of the greatest players of all time. Donning his Yankees cap and Standing By his Joe DiMaggio is my friend Luke Noonan (a.k.a. the Hemel Hempstead Hitter).

Stand By And Squeeze Your Pedro Martinez...

Just a quick post tonight. With all this talk of little men, here is Eric Wormann’s hand and a small Pedro Martinez. He’s the Boston Red Sox pitcher and is pictured here chucking balls at Yankee Stadium in New York. I do believe this was a series that Boston went on to win…

The Little Waving Man...

Another random statue posted from around the world this evening, this time featuring a little man*. By the looks of the beach towel and shades, it appears that the statue is located near a beach. Special statue shouts out to Sean (last seen taking on big bananas and big bears), in particular for his stoic facial expressions!

* I have attempted a little investigation into finding out the identity of the statue, but these have so far proved fruitless. I think its location is Thailand, although it could be Australia. Shall endeavour to find out more…