My sister’s boyfriend had been in England playing cricket for 6 months-ish and Thursday was the day of his return, great day for them and great for the rest of us because we no longer had her sulking around the house. In order to celebrate, she wanted to make one of those banners to hang up one of the bridges they would pass under on the way home from the airport. I was enlisted to help out and brought along my other half to, of course we couldn’t just do a normal bed-sheet-and-spray-paint effort, instead we bought a bunch of material and cut out huge letters of the white fabric to go on the dark blue back. Tuesday night I helped draw and cut out letters, then about 11:30 started at the sewing machine to sew on the tags to tie the thing up (one in each corner, one in the middle on the sides and two on the top and bottom – so 10 in total). Not only am I a shocking sewer (but still better that the other two) but I was dead tired, and fell asleep shortly after on the lounge while the others went on the glue all the letters on the sheet. As you can see the results were pretty impressive.
Fast forward to the next morning, and after weeks of gorgeous weather, rain is forecast. All day at work I was staring out the window hoping it wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t. My sister left us with the banner and we scouted out the potential bridges after work, the plan being to go back about midnight and hang it up . It had to be late, a) for dark cover, b) Sister’s Boyfriend’s Dad would have driven under the bridges that night but his parent’s didn’t know he was coming home. About 11pm it pours, we wait it out and jump in the car about 11:45, again in pours so we wait in the car near the target bridge till it eased off and we ran out. Again it started, light at first so we started tying up the banner then it pours on us and the sign and the umbrella. Afterwards we did a loop and drove under the bridge, pulling over to get a couple photos – lucky.
The next morning on the way to work we drive under the bridge, on the approach there is a blue area but no white, turns out the glue wasn’t really water resistant, all the letters came off and were half dangling off the edge of the bridge under the big dark blue reactangle hanging proudly.
Moral to the story: spray paint on a bed sheet might not look quite as pro, but at least rain wont wash it away (if it does, at least it didn’t take you all night to make).
