Images belong to thelionheartproject.com. All rights reserved

While a big chunk of this blog is devoted to showing you the coloured, painted and scribbled-in corners of other people’s towns, it has a special place for projects that are open to everyone. For this reason, I was particularly happy when Seema in London sent news of an absolutely gorgeous initiative. And one which can only improve with the contribution of people from wildly different cultures, cities and mindsets. 

Devotees of Guerrilla Knitting spend hours twisting coloured lengths of yarn into ”textile installations”. These pieces of 3D imagination are then snipped from their balls of wool, labelled, and placed out in the wilds: into strawberry patches, around lamp posts or on top of stone statues. 

Finally, they appear as this…

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Pictures by Armando Seijo. All rights reserved

Some time ago, an email dropped into the Colouring a corner inbox with the subject title: “Colouring a corner… literally”.

It was from Peter, a regular contributor of posts such as this, this and this.

It had this attachment:

And it read, 

“This is Armando Seijo, who paints live in a rather delightful, and hard to find, music bar off Cable St in London, called Jamboree. His paintings cover the walls. But he also has this in a church in Limehouse. 

I’ve been to the bar three times now and it’s always been interesting and welcoming, if chaotic. Last night it was supposed to be a Celtic jam session organised by an American bassist/pianist/accordionist called Dakota Jim, but he and I were the only musicians there, so we just played together all evening. 

Worth following up I think.”

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Ever since its beginning, Colouring a corner has had a place for messages left out on the street. And from their corners of the world, readers have sent in their found messages, including pleas for tolerance scrawled in chalk, declarations of love spread onto concrete, activism laid out in block letters, and art written very carefully in white paint.

Nobody knows who wrote them. Only that whoever did it felt their message important enough to take outside, write down and leave for the passerby to stop at, step around or scrub away.

Out of all the messages found in public spaces, this is the one that readers mention to me the most. For those of you who liked it, you may be interested to know that another one has mysteriously appeared in the same pub in Southwark. This time tucked behind a bowl of lemons, it urges us not into heady romance but, in shaky typewriter font, into a sturdy life and work ethic.

Again, I have no idea who is leaving the messages out. But I’m beginning to warm to the strange little pub that keeps its life lessons next to its potted plants, lemons and salt and pepper shakers.

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Last week, I posted the first part of my interview with the formidable Muireann Carey-Campbell, who hospitably receives up to 50,000 visitors to her blog, Bangs and a Bun, every month. And makes it look easy. How does she really pull in such huge numbers? Through “relentless” self promotion, making meaningful connections and being truly herself online.

So, here you have it: part two. In the final stretch of our interview, Carey-Campbell talks about fans, favourite spots, fantasies of going offline for a week…and the occasional death threat.

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Photo of Muireean Carey-Campbell. All rights reserved

At this stage, I’m pretty well-practised at exploring the city, snooping around side streets and loitering by lamp posts, looking for leaflets, street doodlings and notices about interesting events.

As time has gone by, though, I’ve realised that there’s almost as much to explore indoors as out. That the space inside my computer can be as fascinating, and ripe for exploration, as that beyond the front door. And that there are just as many interesting sites, events and stories - and just as relevant a community - online as outdoors. There have been times, usually when it’s raining, when the virtual space of the Internet has been the ultimate playground for a nosey parker like me.

Last year, I posted here and here about Faraday the Blob, a comic strip that lives on the Internet. I didn’t have comments set up at the time, but my google analytics told me that it was one of my most popular posts. Assuming then that you, my readers, are as intrigued by the webscape (and those who inhabit it) as I am, I sought out a blogger whose blog has the force of personality to pull in 30-50,000 visitors a month.

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Many readers will remember this car, found in Prague, that - in all of its hearse-like, death-coloured, cat-and-rat-festooned glory - urged us to remember our mortality. Well, those of you who found yourselves intrigued may be interested in its story, which has just come to me. So, in explanation of the car’s markings and as proof of what a ridiculously small world we live in, I’ve printed the email below.

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As the Royal wedding of Price William and Kate Middleton creeps ever closer, London’s streets and corners are being gradually doused in red, white and blue. In the lead up to April 29^th, flags, bunting - and, increasingly, people decked out with Union Jack emblazoned t-shirts, umbrellas and picnic blankets - are colouring-in the areas around Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace with gusto.

But there’s one patch that promises even more colour. From 10am on the 29^th of April 2011, London’s Soho Square will host the wedding to end all weddings: the Zombie Wedding Celebration and Flash Mob.

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Back in January, while walking along a street swept with sea breeze, I found someone’s life story in a hedgerow.

It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed an ordinary person placing something of himself out in public. I see people do it all the time- through print and pictures painted on pavements and walls, through poetry and personal projects, through cars, costumes and confessions. But it was the first time I’d seen such a story set out in a time line, spanning years.

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