IDLING away your time on a public bench while life goes on all around you is something of a lost art, but a community group in Abergavenny has recently launched a new scheme to make it easy for locals to take the weight off and chill in areas of the town you wouldn’t normally associate with public seating.

The group’s pilot project involved placing a luxurious 1970s-themed chair in the alleyway leading from the bus station, passing behind the back of The George, and to Lower Monk Street.

The hope was that as people passed, they’d take advantage of the unfamiliar seat to maybe take a breather, smoke a cigarette, have a can, watch the world go by, and maybe attempt to initiate conversation with passing strangers.

Mr Chez Lange from the community group Chairmen of the Bored, told the Chronicle, “The idea behind the project is pretty simple. As a group, we feel there’s simply not enough public seating in Abergavenny!

“And it’s sad because our research shows that people tend to be more sociable when they’re sitting. Don’t ask me why, it’s just a primal thing.”

Chez added, “Thanks to generous funding from public bodies, we were able to initiate a project to get Abergavenny sitting and talking again.

“The scheme works by placing a chair we have salvaged from a skip or house clearance somewhere. (Reducing the carbon footprint was a key criterion of the project’s funding.) We then place it in an area of Abergavenny that people would not normally want to sit, such as in a deserted alley or near some industrial bins.

“We place the chairs in areas more associated with urban decay to challenge the public’s preconceived notion of what is aesthetically pleasing and also to see if anyone will sit in a place they don’t feel comfortable.”

Chez explained that to date, the results have been disappointing, but he believes the scheme has legs!