Testing, testing… One,Two…One, Two… Oh we’re live!
I’m a bit nervous about this as I’ve always thought that blogging is not for me, I always get my words in muddle, use ten where one would do and I never could keep a diary….but… nothing ventured nothing gained.
It’s 3 years almost to the day since I escaped from ‘the office’ to pursue my interest in things wooden. It seems about time to review my journey thus far and to look at where it is may take me in the future. I hope that this blog will serve to educate, amuse and enrich (to borrow a phrase). The more I learn about these crafts the more I realise I have to learn. It does suprise me that we have let so many almost die out, particularly when they allow us to get so much closer to the outdoors and countryside. Perhaps we have now turned the corner, and these skills will become more highly valued in a future which puts our environment as a primary concern.
After 22 years earning a regular salary I am now self-employed with a number of part time jobs all of which have something to do with wood or my interests in rural crafts. I spend most of the summer as a pole-lathe turner – aka – ‘the lazy bodger’ (pole-lathe turners making chair legs were sometimes known as bodgers) and a charcoal burner. During the winter I work as a woodsman managing woodland, heathland and clearing scrub as well as teaching chainsaw and tree felling. I try to spend as much time as possible at the pole-lathe but as it tends to be the least well paid of my jobs it can be a struggle. I am often asked at shows ‘Do you do this for a living?’ a question which is hard to answer. The best I have come up with so far is ‘I wouldn’t call it a living’, but I am making progress.
In addition to the pole-lathe turning and woodsman work I will be posting on other interests and activities, not to say obsessions, from home brewing (its almost cider, blackberry and elderberry wine season again), the trials and tribulations of running old series II landrovers and triumph cars, making preserves, and an inability to resist beachcombing whenever I get the opportunity.
That will have to do as an introduction for the moment and leave the rest for the future as I hope to establish a regular posting routine here.
Woodlandantics Blog 