As well as finding a venue – which people keep telling me is important – there are a hundred small shop tasks I could happily drown in, like making handmade tags. I’ve been collecting (hoarding) these ribbons for years and they are coming in handy now that I am assembling the tags.
I’m not sure exactly what I will do with them, and so the Theme of Uncertainty continues to run headlong through this project…
I discovered that small loaves of sliced pan bread in Ireland often come with a piece of 
card at one end, I guess to keep the bread in shape? The card is a perfect, size for labels so I emailed some friends asking if they’d collect them for me. Strangely it seems that few of my friends eat this kind of bread… most of them eat artisan loaves or they make their own bread, and one family only eats pitta bread, with everything including jam!
Some people thought I wanted them to post the actual last slice of bread in the pan. So much for clarity. My family always called that piece the “heel”, someone wrote and told me that hers calls them “Knoskis”.
Quite a few wanted to give me advice or send other types of cardboard which I found comforting but confusing:
“is the bread element part of it?? can’t you go the council and get loads of recycled stuff for free. or is this part of the art…. do you know the artist who ate his body shape through a huge massive mound of bread… rather beautiful and also an interesting way of pushing the notion of an elegant sufficiency to the edge of its boundaries…”
“I ONLY eat spelt bread from the farmer’s market: you’ll have to find less ‘high end’ friends for your project”…
“I do…have a spare room that is almost (except for an unpacked tent and a bike) all dedicated to unused (but hopefully useful in the future) cardboard. most of it is too cardboard-ie for your use i imagine…. does it have to be plain coloured on both sides? cos i have some pizza boxes and porridge boxes but only plain on one side…..”
I started to feel like I was swimming in the details of other people’s minds and got a bit worried about the future of the sliced pan.
I still haven’t received any cardboard in the post!