Stuart Atkinson, a 58-year-old full-time chemist from Manchester, has become the unlikely champion of what he cheerfully calls Britain’s “dullest” calendars. Most people shopping for a calendar are looking for cute animals, scenic landscapes, or maybe a nice picture of a beach somewhere. Stuart’s calendars, by contrast, have focused on things like pylons, motorway junctions, and wheelie bins. And somehow, against all odds, they’ve found an audience. Now he’s back with four new subjects for 2027: gravel, the M62, Merseyside’s wheelie bins, and Manchester’s traffic cones. If that sounds like an odd mix, well, that’s sort of the point. Stuart told Metro that he’s simply interested in the everyday infrastructure around us, “as dull as it may be.” For him, the appeal is in the detail. Whatever the subject is, there’s always plenty to look at, plenty to compare, and plenty to fill twelve months with. What began as a joke with friends and family has turned into a genuinely popular little side project, and Stuart seems just as surprised as anyone that people are willing to buy a calendar dedicated to the humble wheelie bin or a stretch of motorway.
The gravel calendar, strange as it sounds, came about almost by accident. Stuart was talking to someone about how anything can be considered art when he happened to look down at the ground. He said, “You could take 12 shots of this, and it would look good on a calendar.” And maybe it does. As he pointed out, people put gravel on their driveways, so there must be something to it. The 2027 gravel calendar features detailed close-up photos of rocks, which sounds ridiculous until you remember that people happily frame photos of pebbles and stone walls. Stuart’s approach is not to mock the mundane, exactly; it’s more like he’s inviting people to look twice at things they’d normally ignore. That same spirit has carried through his previous projects. His first calendar was all about pylons near Manchester, and it started as a joke with friends and family before the product actually began selling. From there, he branched out to make a calendar about the M60, profiling 27 junctions across two different calendars. This year, he also made a new calendar focused on the M62. The subjects may be ordinary, but the treatment is thoughtful, and that’s probably why people keep coming back.
The wheelie bin calendars are perhaps the clearest example of how Stuart’s daft ideas can turn into something unexpectedly charming. His calendar detailing Manchester’s different bins became such a hit last year that he’s now made one focused entirely on Merseyside’s wheelie bins. The Merseyside edition features Bella, a cartoon Liver bird, who shares fun facts about each bin across the region. There’s also a “BINFO” panel that gives readers the capacity, annual capacity, council tax, and rate per litre for each bin. It’s the kind of information most people never think about, but once it’s laid out in a calendar, it becomes weirdly fascinating. Stuart did a lot of research for the Manchester version, covering 10 boroughs, 40 bins, all the volumes, collection frequencies, and pence per litre. That calendar was his most popular publication so far. It’s easy to see why: there’s something funny about treating a wheelie bin with the same seriousness a wildlife calendar might give to a lion or a penguin. But Stuart isn’t just throwing random objects together for a laugh. He’s genuinely interested in the systems and objects that make everyday life work, and that curiosity comes through in the final product.
When asked about his personal favourite, Stuart doesn’t hesitate: it’s got to be pylons. He’s always had a bit of a soft spot for them, ever since school, when there was a huge one right outside and he and his friends used to hang out underneath it. That early connection probably explains why pylons were his first calendar subject, and why he still speaks about them with real affection. These days, he focuses on profiling things that either amuse him or interest him, though he admits the amusing ones are more popular. “If it sounds daft enough, then that’s usually a good indicator it will sell well,” he joked. That formula seems to be working. He’s already started thinking of ideas for daft calendars in 2028, and he has one very specific milestone in mind: the pylon centenary. As he reminded Metro, 2028 is the centenary of the first pylon going up. For most people, that’s a trivia fact they might hear once and forget. For Stuart, it’s a potential calendar theme. He added that it’s all about finding something that captures people’s imagination—or at least leaves them baffled. And honestly, a pylon centenary calendar sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would leave people baffled in the best possible way.
Stuart’s family thought his idea to profile mundane items in yearly calendars was a bit daft to begin with, but they’ve been pleasantly surprised—and so has he. The calendars have sold, the press has come calling, and the whole thing has grown from a private joke into a small but genuine phenomenon. There’s something refreshing about that. In a world full of glossy, aspirational calendars promising dream holidays and perfect sunsets, Stuart is out here celebrating gravel, traffic cones, motorway junctions, and bins. It’s silly, but it’s also strangely comforting. As Stuart told Metro last year, “The world’s always been in a mess, but it seems to be in a worse mess at the moment.” If his calendars bring a smile to someone’s face, even just by giving them something ridiculous to laugh at, then that’s a bonus enough. “I’ve probably succeeded,” he said. And that might be the real secret to the whole project: it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Stuart isn’t trying to change the world with a wheelie bin calendar. He’s just inviting people to notice the ordinary, have a bit of a laugh, and maybe learn more than they ever expected about the pence-per-litre capacity of a Merseyside bin. In its own quiet way, that’s a pretty good reason to make a calendar.
