Deeds Over Words, Every Time
Each time I come to write one of these posts, I feel a need to apologise for a long delay. Perhaps it’s my propensity for feeling guilt at everything, perhaps the time passes too quickly to keep up.
This summer has been no exception, and Willow and I found ourselves discussing disbelief at how rapidly the year has flown by. Just a few short days ago we were getting ready to head off to our first festival of the summer, and yet last weekend we found ourselves singing along to the last refrains as Foolhardy Folk in Nottingham came to a close- and with it our summer of outdoor events. The time in between has been stacked of course, a month of summer school teaching and a huge conservation job have been juggled alongside contractual obligations at the County archaeology service. There’s been a good deal of partying, too. My working days have been typically around 15 hours long, and frequently 7 days a week; but that’s how I like it.
Summers for me are a sort of turbocharged existence, and always have been. I think it comes from growing up and working on farms. The traditional ‘hungry months’ of pre harvest and harvest are a pell-mell tumble of getting everything done, in the countryside. Now that my farm work is only through the association of machine repairs and countryside work, my own harvest seems to be more of a title bout between my to-do list and I. I struggle to conquer as many of the targets I set myself, before the long daylight hours escape once again to the other side of the world. It becomes more pressing as all my tasks are completed outdoors; I’ve been without a workshop for nearly five years now, and with last year being predominantly a washout, the jobs have kind of stacked up.
Of course, building the forge boat becomes one of the more important ‘to-do’ items in this context, and failure to get the roof in place by now can only be marked as a big check against me on the scorecard. There has not been enough hours in a week, however, and I frequently need to remind myself that I set no completion date on these jobs, despite berating myself constantly for not meeting the non-existent deadline. Yea, it’s exhausting living in this internal dialogue.
Progress is, therefore, faltering. My roof frame is still half-welded, and languishes on its formwork in a yard that I need to vacate sometime in the next year. I took the decision to contract out the last bit of welding last month, though for reasons as yet unknown, the job is as yet undone. Time is beginning to run short however, so I perhaps need to find a different solution.
The reason I haven’t been able to do the work myself is that there has been another big, immovable deadline looming on my horizon for the last few weeks (note the foreshadowing here). I’ve had a greater-than-usual need to gather money up like summer corn in preparation for the coming winter, as I took the decision to leave my main job over the summer. I’d not been in post all that long, taking up the role of an archaeological supervisor over the winter of last year, but frankly the job was driving me wild with frustration. Not that there was anything wrong with it per se, more that it turned out to be entirely the wrong environment for me to be in. An open plan office and a computer at a desk are not the thing. Now, this came as no surprise to those who know me best, in fact the very act of taking the job caused more than one comic splutter mid-conversation when I announced the news. Over twenty years of self-employment, coupled with a university job that offers me complete autonomy and trust has set my own baseline norm far away from the expectations of a regular job, and the close monitoring of every minute of every day drove me up the wall in particular. I didn’t know this when I set out, and I had to try; but it’s not the road for me, so I threw in the towel before we all fell out.
Well, that’s half the story, at least. The other half? Well. It’s about the immovable deadline, and the project that comes with it.
I’m off back to college next week. Full time, for two years. As long-time readers will know, I went back to my original college of blacksmithing the year before last, to refresh my technique and retouch some of the skills I’ve not used in over a decade. The more work I do, the more it strikes me that my skill set is very much that of a welder-fabricator-fitter these days, and far less that of a traditional blacksmith. The world has moved on significantly in the craft as well, since I first learned the trade. Whilst I have a particular interest in part of the profession (that of conservation work that dovetails in with the traditional buildings conservation that I specialise in academically, archaeologically, and in practical terms on buildings) I am aware that the sector is a different place than when I was in my early 20s. I have therefore concluded that in order to give it all the very best shot in the future, it would really pay to spend more time under tuition and in a formal forge setting. To that end I have taken a place on a 2 year Diploma at college in Sussex, and will be spending 3 days of every week from September in the South Downs, surrounded by other students.
It’s a big step, and one that poses many threats- I’ve not yet worked out how I’ll make ends meet, and I leave myself only really a couple of days each week to make my living. The reality is that there will need to be much cutting of cloth, and keeping of the now legendary low profile if I’m going to avoid bankruptcy. But I’ve managed it before (hell, I’ve even survived bankruptcy itself whilst doing it) and if I know anything about myself it’s that I am resourceful, capable of putting up with hardship, and quite able to live on tinned beans if needs be. Obviously I am leaning into the risk with optimism, and more than that I am proactively seeking solutions already; but it doesn’t take a genius to know me and understand that the risk is part of the fun, part of the challenge, and something that I find both stimulating and motivating.
In short, and at the risk of hubris, I love it. The jeopardy, the unknown, the ‘starting again’, and the sheer brilliance of the potential it offers. On some level, even the hardship can be pleasant. I have a difficult relationship with ease, and find myself mistrusting anything that happens without a hitch. Perhaps growing up in the land of Shakespeare baked some sort of theatrical form into me; the quest is everything, and I normally face some sort of denouement before any victory can be savoured. Now, with full disclosure, I’m no stranger to study. I’ve a Bachelor’s degree, two Master’s degrees, a doctorate, and several vocational qualifications, not to mention all the professional stuff I’ve gathered along the way. The list is long, and friends often joke ‘you’ve not been a student for a month, what you going to do next?’ but the joke falls flat; I love the challenge and love learning and frankly can think of nothing worse than the prospect of not doing it forever.
So I dive straight back in, and go on making things more difficult for myself as I do. Far from taking a place to study in Hereford, where I could have moved my boats and lived out an easy couple of years at study in comfort, I took the place on the south coast instead. There are no canals, and scarce navigable rivers where I’m going, so my boats have to stay in Oxfordshire. I also couldn’t afford to rent so much as a postage stamp in the area of my new college (even if I did have an income of which to speak), so where the hell am I to live? Well, about that other project I mentioned…
When I first went to University in the early 2000s, I was passed on to a friend of a relative who had a room to rent in the town. She was a pleasant woman, quietly spoken, sober, a keen fan of line dancing, and who lived in a house which was entirely painted white and ABSOLUTELY SPOTLESSLY CLEAN. I rented the room for a while, but frankly I was as out of place as a person can possibly be. I used to dread going back there at night, and would clean my way out of the house of a morning, walking backwards and sweeping for dirty spots like a paranoid catburglar. It was no good, so I reverted to type and bought myself a Ford Escort van, fitted the back out with plywood, cushions, and a bed, and lived in that instead.
This time round, I’m cutting straight to the chase and gone straight for the van, I'll skip the awkward lodger bit. I have gone up-market a tad, though. Still a Ford, but this time a full sized Transit, and more than a mere mattress in the back- I’ve spent the summer lining it out with insulation, full electrics (including solar power), sink, hob, a fridge, sofa, and bed. I’ve even had windows fitted and made curtains all round. Of course, it’s not quite finished, but it’s ready enough to go, and come the start of term I’ll be off down south to live in the hills on the quiet lanes and learn the finer parts of my craft. I can’t wait to get started!
When I handed my notice in at the County and told them what I was to do, my line manager condescended ‘oh Richard, you’ll always be an old hippy won’t you’. ‘Bloody right,’ I replied, ‘rather that than a middle manager’.
So I guess it’s going to get really interesting now, life. I’ll take that over comfort, too.
