Spoonville

Hi everyone who’s balls deep in Victorian lockdown. I hope we are all embracing our one hour of exercise and attempting to stand upright in the shower this week. It’s fair to say that there’s little to get excited about right now and the general response to the question ‘what’s new?’ is ‘LOL’. It is a bit fucking groundhog day. Personally being amid a peaking phase of the roller coaster which is my mental health, I’m going to aim for a reasonably upbeat go at connecting with you all this week. A little bit less sad and stabby, if you like.

Basically my frown has recently been turned upside down by a collection of decorated spoons that began to appear on the bank of a river which I walk by every morning. It began a couple of weeks ago, with a solitary wooden spoon painted red and blue with a child-like face, sticking out of the grass, unexplained and alone. I had no idea what the fuck it was doing there and that was about the end of my thought process that morning (clearly too many Zooms and not enough coffee). However, over the next several days others appeared next to it, obviously created by different spoon-ventors, some with pipe cleaners, buttons and other decorations glued on as embellishment. They all looked like different random characters out of a kid’s story book. I was fucking intrigued, even more so when a friend messaged me in response to my corresponding Instagram story to say that there was a ‘Spoonville’ out near her place too. It had a name! I had to find out where this had come from and why it was a thing, so I did some research.

According to an article in The Age, Spoonville began in England originally, and was started up in Melbourne by a lady named Junelle, who got the idea from a friend of hers who had gotten it going in Scotland. The premise behind it was to keep kids entertained throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, and give people something to smile about at a time where everyone’s mental health was (is) basically in the shitter. Originally there’s meant to be some sort of signage in place indicating the purpose of the spoons, but personally I think it was more interesting to see them randomly appear and grow with no context behind them. Now Melbourne has overtaken Scotland in terms of Spoonville population, and, as of a month ago, we boasted 33 spoon filled dwellings, from the outskirts to inner city.

I had one purpose last Sunday and that was obviously to create my own ‘Spoony’. I spent a good hour sitting on the floor of my home gym and using paint, a glue gun, and sequins, to create a Princess Spoon (and a big fucking mess on my yoga mat) and then waiting impatiently for the downpour to relent so I could proudly walk her down to the river to join the others. You may have realised I wrote ‘proudly’, not ‘foolishly’. That’s fucking right. This whole Spoonville thing may have been created for children, but I know two adults in their mid thirties who are excitedly planning a Sunday stroll to check out the Abbotsford Spoonville division, armed with massive grins and freshly crafted spoons. Clue: I am one of them.

What Spoonville got me thinking about was how cool it is when joy isn’t just kept in a little box but is shared, especially in a time like this when there’s not a whole lot to go around anyway. Joy, love, and kindness…all that warm fuzzy shit…is what people need right now. There’s so much anger and stress and sadness happening all around us and inside of us and this situation is challenging us all. We all need something to smile about, even if it’s as silly as a wooden spoon with pipe cleaners stuck to it.

So do it. This Sunday. Get a wooden spoon and spend a joyful Sunday crafting that fucker. Add it to your local Spoonville, or start your own. Know that you will also have put a smile on the faces of those who take their daily walk past Spoonville to check for new characters, coz I’m one of them.