On being a Drafts Man

It's a pun, not a typo; you can put the knives away.

I'm quite embarrassed really, looking at all the drafts in my unpublished folder. It's been too long again, and I'm astonished to see how many people stick around to see my next attempt at deftly arranged prose. The days and weeks are flying past; those years of my youth when time stretched out in a seemingly infinite arc are long gone, it now taking on the tones of a passing siren. Whether that tone is still compressed in approach or now elongated and distorted in retreat, I cannot quite tell.

In practical developments, the sliding side door of the van has started to stick. It's not major news I grant you, but a useful metaphor perhaps. I swear at it often, as some invisible flaw causes the smooth rolling motion to halt abruptly six inches short of being closed, adding another job to my list. It is persistently raining now, so urgency to shut the weather out is increased, and as I'm a few weeks past my last cigarette my patience is tested easily.

I have, it seems, tried to sit and write four of these blog posts since I last pressed 'publish', and the failure of any to glide to their conclusion is suggestive of the rollercoaster this Autumn- and now Winter- have already been. I have been flickering between jubilant, highly stressed and disregulated, determined, ill, and... well, a little drunk. Same as ever really, one might say.

The more introverted element of me has spent much of the time since September examining the last 20 years in some significant depth. Being away from home four days each week and not knowing anyone for several weeks will do that, if one is predisposed. For those not in the know, I'm studying again; this time some more advanced forgework, and learning to make jewellery as well.

I have to formalise the last bits of my skillset for the purposes of work insurance and membership of professional bodies, and have- in typical fashion- taken myself off to the most remote college I could have chosen when viewed from my Cotswold home. In doing so, I've put myself firmly back into the poverty trap- self imposed of course, and essential I think. I'm also trying to rectify a long-since made mistake.

I left the world of craft, in an academic sense, almost 16 years ago. Postgraduate study in STEM has given me a lot, not least a Master of Research degree, a Doctorate, and the opportunity to work at the most famous university in the world together with a handful of high profile sites from Italy to the West Coast of America. I've made some fantastic friends and worked with some truly talented and marvellous people. I have also been almost universally unfulfilled. It's not the fault of the work, nor my colleagues, merely that the truth is I belong in the creative sector, and whenever I'm not making or fixing something I'm guaranteed to be miserable.

The technology-driven world of research doesn't lend itself to traditional makers much now, and I have learned very much to my cost that I don't belong in a lab. Coming back to craft in the last three years has been an object lesson of meeting myself all over again, from a short-lived job making and repairing furniture at a reclamation yard, through a disastrous and poorly advised management job at an archaeological unit, and now finally to a place where I spend my week in college and my weekends working on historic masonry. The tearing off of this plaster has been drawn out and a little too painful at times. Yet here I am; doing the thing. It's not perfect, and there is friction (not least between myself and my bank account), but it is absolutely wonderful. Unlike this sodding van door, which is more friction than wonder in all respects.

I came down here in the half-built van in September, and spent three months living first in a farmyard, and then a pub car park when the rain set in.

My evenings were spent atop Ditchling Beacon looking across the South Downs, my nights in the van with books (and a persistent community of gnats). Late in November, the college offered me a room to sleep in at a heavily discounted rate- because at the age of 47 I have become a 'free school meals' qualifying student. I have literally no idea how I'm going to pay for it, because I lose my main source of income on New Year's Day; the end of a fixed term contract that somehow lasted five years, but I've taken the room anyway, and moved in last week. At the moment I'm looking forward to Christmas, but by the time it rolls round I may be fretting far more comprehensively if nothing has been found to replace the salary. Still, these are not new challenges, I've been far more broke in the past and pulled myself out of the hole. The precarity is familiar, and at least I've got things I can sell if it gets really tight. Meeting pre-STEM me means coming face-to-face with another reality of my young self, in that respect. At least this time round I've got somewhere to live at both ends of this road, and a CV worth sending out.

'You're on the adventure of a lifetime', a friend recently said to me about coming back to college proper. Truth is my life has been an adventure throughout, and will continue to be so while I have strength and enthusiasm to keep on making big decisions like this. I already have ideas on where the next steps will lead, but they won't be advertised until they are taken, because as I've learned with all these good intentions- terms and conditions apply.

Back on the water, after a pause of some five months, the Oxford Canal was opened up to traffic on the section my boats are on this week, so Sunday morning saw Willow and I casting off for a mammoth run of about half a mile down to the next moorings. It buys me two precious weeks of unpestered time after which I will begin to run Murphy's Game up the locks towards Banbury again, ready for a New Year during which I must find time to begin building the middle cabin. It's been several months since I took paint or spanners to it, and there are plants almost a foot tall growing in the open hold following a warm and very wet Autumn. In August I paid someone to weld the framework for the roof for me, but the job hasn't been done so I will have to take that back in hand. It's a frustration, but I have to remind myself that a rushed project is a poorly finished one- and my own definition of timely progress is often different to everyone else's. It's not important, I'm comfortable with the fact progress fluctuates and has to wait for me- and my bank account- to be ready; but I've started to get testy when others press me for a completion date. It'll be done when I'm good and ready, of course. That I am ready makes for a little more tension.

I hope to write again soon, and thank you all for sticking around while I pick up threads of thought for these posts, and frequently drop them again. There are a million moving parts to life at the moment, some that roll smoothly into place, others that repeatedly stick somewhere along the track.