And then move in.
My second, and last, woodwork teacher, always used to say that a job isn’t finished until the tools are put away ; in fact, cleaned,sharpened, oiled and only then put away. My teacher -Wally B is I assume long dead as he was in his 60’s when I knew him as a teenager in the 70’s. Mr B, I know had served as aircrew during the war years – remember that that was still recent history in the 1970’s and at a time when a third one seemed a daily threat. At the end of term, or notably at the end of the school year, one of the big jobs in the woodwork shop was to wipe and oil all of the hand tools and give the place a final sweep out before leaving for the long summer break.
Most of my tools haven’t done well as they’ve been stored in a rolling tool cart under the outside shelter and we’ve had two wet winters ; somehow rainwater has been getting in which means that many of my carbon steel tools are now dead and even the stainless steel ones have rust tide marks. One of my jobs this week was to gather everything together in one place and sort them into piles of what I could rescue, what will go on my new tool storage dresser and what had to go in the next bag of rubbish that was mounting up. One rule that the job demonstrated was Savage’s dictum: that any horizontal space will quickly become covered with stuff.
Not only in the workshop either but my writing desk is covered in stuff, behind me my inside work station is covered in more stuff and you should see my floor end of the sofa : yes….floor as repository for even more stuff. I find it ironic in a funny kind of way that just when I seem to be on a mission to get rid of and minimize the stuff that has accumulated the whole house has turned into a floor mounted junk heap. The job that i’m moving onto in the workshop is that same one that iv’e done twice before and that is to build the perfect workshop storage rack using the entire front wall. When I finish it there are box loads of stuff to go in there except maybe not this time around.
The big problem that iv’e had and still have with stuff is that whatever i’m really into or have been into at some time in the last 20 years has left me with a high tide mark of stuff. One good example is my sailing life as for that iv’e had several working tool kits on each boat plus the tool chest which I drove out to the boatyard with, and then there are the two or three storage boxes of fasteners, parts, fittings and one just stuffed with cordage. What the latter needs is a local boat jumble as the Dyneema is high end stuff and probably useful to someone : as for now though it keeps going back in the store each time I rebuild and reorganize my storage.
A lesser example is that for most of my life iv’e been some variety of outdorsman and in most of the outdoors things that iv’e done iv’e always needed the ability to stay out there in some fashion or other, thus I still own several tents and several rucksacks and tarps. Right now just one of my tents has strong sentimental value, another one is slowly going moldy in the trailer while it’s another one entirely we take on our road trips. I tried selling the big canvas tent but no one seems to be buying them now and one day I know it will go to the tip unless I suddenly find a use for that much heavy canvas – I doubt it though and one day we’ll get around to heaving it at the tip.
My life has radically changed ; so much is obvious, Iv’e retired from sailing and the hiking I do is a matter of completing my 7500 steps per day around the local lanes. Many readers will know that that’s all down to having had a series of minor strokes in 2024 and before : minor in the sense that I can walk and talk but each one has done some damage such that I have a noticeable brain injury. I say that it’s a bit like a computer with a corrupted program except that I start with that as my brain seems to be running a different program to most folks.
This week I seem to have dived headlong into a huge clear out ; not just the workshop but today iv’e thrown out many old clothes as i’m losing weight quite rapidly now. I also had a first sweep of my books and just now photographed and listed my old DSLR cameras for sale or auction : what I tend to carry and use is a much smaller and lighter compact camera and am thinking about a step up to a mirrorless DSLR which would be more compact and far lighter than the old school DSLR’s that I used to film and blog with. I did buy an Iphone for the same purpose but hated it so much that iv’e given it to Jackie who seems to quite like it.
The last of my boats has gone as has my recumbent trike which I bought for stroke recovery and local mobility – I didn’t get on with that either and am hankering after another motorcycle instead. That might seem quite radical but i’m waiting to see if I come through surgery Ok. If I do and I get my weight down far enough I might well pull the trigger on that project as I know what I would really like ; I want to book-end my riding years with a small Royal Enfield at the start and one of the modern 650’s at what I think will be the end of it.
A 250cc Royal Enfield only much smarter than the one I owned in the 1970’s : what I would like now is something like the kind of grown up 650 that I first went on as a wind swept passenger one time.
Back to the blog though :
As is my way now I often start posts that I never finish and most posts sit in the drafts bin while I slowly add to them or delete them but save the useful sections for posts like my possibles bag series ; they’re usually mash ups of ideas or thoughts that only need a paragraph or a few lines. Some though do need developing and there’s something going on in my mental life that I find I need to track down and work on. Some of that is created by what i’m doing in the workshop ; not only rebuilding it but working out the way i’m going to use it. To steel a saying from weird world it might be a case of ‘ as below so above’ or the same except in reverse.
Without being able to define it yet I already have an analogy for the mental process going on right now. It’s a bit like being in school detention and being made to write lines – something like “I must not call the French teacher a daft cnut” written out a hundred times as petty punishment. I have to add that I was the first kid in our year to get detention and yes, it was for having been snarky back with a particularly bad teacher whom I detested. You’ll probably grin when you hear that I wrote out the first side of an A4 sheet as ordered but when I flipped it over I flipped it over and changed the line to ; I must, rather than I must not. Given that the dweeb of a teacher immediately snatched it off the desk, glanced at the first side only and then tore it up and binned it I went away quite chuffed.
I think i’ll leave it there for now as I can see already most of next week’s work without having to massively over think it.
Have Fun Y’awl
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 