The ecoDepot resembles a pot on a potter’s wheel. This is probably due to having to slosh about in thick mud to reach the building. Storms have blessed the rain harvesting tank abundantly. Four steps onto the site and my boots double in weight and are making that powerful and slightly scary suction noise you hear when an elderly aunt you haven’t seen in years plants a sloppy kiss a little too close to your ear. In the middle of this moat of mud stands the ecoDepot. Bright stainless steel guttering is clinging to the roofline, awaiting downpipes to take the rain away. In the Interpretation Room scaffolding has gone up then come down again as a floor to ceiling curved wall has cedar cladding applied to its surface. The clad surface looks wonderful, a wooden wave frozen in space and hung vertically inside a building. Having laid a wooden floor I know a little about how tricky this is, ensuring that each strip of wood is related to but different from its neighbour, ensuring that you don’t get all the pieces of one colour or grain at one end of the room. I have no regrets about not being picked for this job. However, I have a suspicion that if I had done this work, no sooner would my back be turned than I would hear the happy twanging of wood springing away from the curved surface like those spring loaded novelty frogs you suction to windows or table tops to amuse the kids. | "If I had done this work, no sooner would my back be turned I would hear the happy twanging of wood springing away from the curved surface." | |
Inside the building light fittings are going up. All low energy bulbs, before you ask. Lino is down in two of the downstairs toilets and in a small kitchen/cupboard. Upstairs the large open plan area is being painted white and, with the light from the tall windows and the roof lights, the place is still bright. This really is finishing off time. Stair rails, internal windows, gloss paint on skirting boards … No carpeting, however. With the sea of mud outside I can quite understand why. By the time I leave evening is falling. In two days the clocks go back. Twilight is hunched over York as we slide about, two steps forward one step back. On the southern side of the building a huge fat swathe of concrete has just been laid. The urge to do a Hollywood star act on it is immense. A couple of hand prints, a small plaque, you know the kind of thing. ‘Christian Vassie was here’. The surface looks too perfect, it lacks the informality of a friendly touch. But gathered at the edges of this glistening stretch of road, like fishermen around the edges of a pond, are several men. There is a propriatorial air about them that suggests my hand prints might not be welcomed. So I trouser the idea. Maybe some other time? When the concrete is dry I will be able to organise the photographs I have been waiting weeks to take. My previous blog showed an image I christened ‘The three ages of York’. When the scaffolding is gone and there is a cherry picker available I want to take the pictures that will sum up the significance of this ecoDepot. I have been hoping to bring Chris Huhne MP, Shadow Environment Minister for the Lib Dems, to see the ecoDepot when he visits York next week but the lighting will still not be up and running so another time perhaps. Christian, Energy Champion, City of York Council, 27/10/06 | 
