Dymentia is wonderful

      Last night I attended a Royal Society of Arts regional 'networking' meeting, my first ever and a rather daunting experience. The first thing I noticed at reception was a bold advertising card 'Do you know anybody who would like to be a Fellow?' It reminded me of Pyramid selling and Party Plan in the 70's!  I was then interrupted, while I was chatting with a local architect I had not met before, to talk to a stranger by the (presumably Scandinavian) young facilitator (no, we don't do that in the south of England!) and then ushered into neatly formed discussion groups. I felt like a sixth former being controlled to speak freely. Of course it had to be this way. Sitting beside me was a young guy with trendy soft leather retro winkle picker shoes (looked pink to me but I'm colour blind) busy 'networking' on his mk3 iPad jumping up and down taking pictures and recording the experience, yet not once did he make eye contact with me sitting next to him! This is called social networking.

      Two young speakers emerged and I had to choose which discussion group I joined. The first group was headed by a pretty young and self-confident woman who immediately announced 'Dementia is wonderful, depression is wonderful' campaigning for a local support group, and the other, a young guy who had a plan for kids in schools which included knowing how to set up a bank account and preparing for dinner parties. I presumed he was talking about teenagers but he may have been referring to primary school kids! I couldn't help wondering that parents lost the art of having dinner parties decades ago and that the notion of a dinner party in a secondary school in Glasgow was plain funny. As to bank accounts for the young we are still reeling from the education Industry tricking young kids into borrowing vast sums after their 'gap year' to pursue high status and high earning careers through our universities all on a plastic card!  I stupidly joined the education group because that is my passion and of course got embroiled in fanciful ideas-overload making me wonder is it the process or the end result (sorry - 'outcome' is the jargon) that counts in all of this here at the RSA? 

    I engaged in discussion with my sub-group and another very pretty young woman with a nose piercing that glinted under the cold fluorescent lights in this church cafe, muttered something about kids being inspired to use their imagination in schools. No we can't do that, it would lead to anarchy in society, but of course I agreed with her but teachers themselves are terrified of using their imagination, they are so locked into a controlled system! I tried to get a word in saying we need to get back to kids using their hands and minds and making things, but half the problem is in the outdated use of language such as the word 'craft' in society.

    And then the whistle was blown and the two group leaders stood up and revealed something I would never have imagined in all my years on this planet - the young pretty girl announced that the two groups had much common ground and would link together as educating the young and changing attitudes would lead to society changing its attitude over dementia and death. Hang on this is the RSA which is about 'fresh' thinking. Haven't we heard this before and isn't it the age old argument about whether it is the place for school to innovate or reflect what is going on in adult society and thus prepare young adults for it? Of course a bit of both goes on and school is one of the few playgrounds there is. Most teachers don't know what we are preparing young people for because who knows what jobs will be needed in the next decade alone?

     One thing I learned was how the world has changed with all the social media frenzy and we were all encouraged to Twitter away. I would rather have flittered my eyelids at a pretty young woman sitting at the same table but we have lost that art and of course by my repeated use of the word 'young' here means clearly I am not part of the the club that has 'fresh' ideas! Well okay, my ideas are old but are yet to be taken up!

       I was rather offended by the highly articulate facilitator saying that it is fruitless to be a lone soldier taking on projects, but when you have tried getting funding and collaboration for something you are passionate about for longer than he is old and land up funding it and doing it yourself I feel is a simple case of putting your money where your mouth is. As to depression being a wonderful thing I wondered if the pretty young lady had experienced two bouts of utterly indescribable hell in a hospital psychiatric wing and living with it on a daily basis and as to dymentia being wonderful, well, my dear half-sister Barbara suffered rapid premature dementia and died of a brain tumour not long ago. But obviously her heart is in the right place and I can see the logic of trying to make your enemy your friend. But will the research she called for be directed in creating technological gadgets that aid those suffering dementia or used to get to its causes?

       The harrowing experience of someone like myself, essentially someone quite shy, and not a great 'people manipulator' who works primarily alone and gets concrete results on my own, was that the RSA's invitation to me to become a Fellow was a flattering gesture that in reality relies on my subscription to fund much younger people's (and less experienced) voices being exercised and that unless you conform to this relatively new language of social networking, you have nothing to offer, quite apart from age unless you have the title 'professor' before your name! 

       I would have liked the opportunity to say not long ago I was invited by my local technical college to teach a group of 16 to 19 year olds who failed everything in their schooling with no bits of paper to flash around and some were in trouble with the Police, to build an acoustic guitar. I had to teach kids with criminal records for violence to stop brandishing chisels at my face and re-direct their focus. They learned more about numeracy, literacy and discipline in that short experience making something that interest them than all the King's horses and when I met one or two of them in the street years later, they simply stopped and thanked me. I was invited to continue with this project but maintaining simple respect and discipline (that manipulating tools and materials alone demands) was so exhausting I could not go through it all over again. And why should I when discipline is a thing others should teach as a collective effort and first and foremost from their parents.      

Intelligent Design

       The little Smart car that is my workhorse is fantastic in many respects - it is small enough for me to park in my overcrowded street where other cars can't fit into the space, it takes daily battle scars of people pulling in on the narrow hill, letting their foot of the foot break or plainly misjudging their car's clearance and banging into the wings of it and I have a box trailer for occasional heavy loads. And it is economic.
        I can live with the BMW drivers who insist on coming right up to my rear on the open road as I know I can easily blow them away on my motorcycle, but what I find is mind-numbing is a discovery that has temporarily left my intelligently designed little Smart car a piece of useless plastic metal and rubber parked on the road, awaiting a cost effective solution.

Compact, turbo charged 50+mpg Smart Fortwo

    Last week after heavy rainfall (that drowned at least one car driver, so I shouldn't complain) as I switched the ignition on, the left flasher came on and stuck on. It later revealed that the engine management system, a tiny 'black box' crammed full of circuitry that controls absolutely everything on the car is sited under the dashboard and right underneath the windscreen that apparently is prone to leaking. So, having owned over a dozen minis in my youth and remembering that the distributor cap was always prone to damp but one could easily seal it with a plasticising spray or wrap it in insulating tape, I was dumbfounded to discover this little expensive and crucial black box called a 'SAM' (app £500) was not even protected against water ingress, quite apart from the inherent design fault of the leaking windscreen right above it! The official verdict is water in the SAM - replacement. 
     It takes no Einstein to ask why such an intelligently designed car would fail so totally and what makes matters worse is that once the little black box is removed it can't be repaired, a new one is not currently available from Mercedes and even if a new one is replaced it will incur further expense in re-coding to suit my car which means driving the car to Mercedes - Hang on . . . 
    To add injury to insult, once the engine management system (called a SAM) is removed the car is stuck in gear which means it cannot be freewheeled out of the way if it has to be moved.
     Now, this is what is called 'Intelligent' design - a car knowingly designed and based on decades of motor engineering experience by a world leader that has such a basic design flaw and I am referring now specifically to the fact the car can't be moved once the black box control system is removed!. Nobody cares because the 'intelligent' thing is that when things go wrong you can't fix them as in the 'old days' but you bin them and pay a fortune for a replacement and labour charges plus VAT. You are basically f....d.  
    Okay, the devil is always in the detail today so we understand that the Smart car was engineered by Mercedes and was a collaboration with Swatch (the watch people) who I gather designed the body, so we have a cop-out clause that Mercedes didn't actually design the whole car but they put their name to it and if you want it serviced you receive constant reminder calls from Mercedes to book it in and they will tell you everything else that needs doing as well while you sit in the posh waiting room drinking free freshly ground coffee.

    I do think the Smart car is a fantastic car, not least the plastic body panels that flex when others hit you before they break, unlike a metal car that crumples. But this problem of engine management computers is not just peculiar to Smart but runs all across the motor industry today. I heard of someone with a Nissan Micro where they had to go all the way to source the replacement part in Japan - final bill for water getting into it - £2000. 

I do like the Smart car for urban use and I have considered an electric version but the technology is still in its infancy. Renault have brought out a dinky little electric car called the Twizy and I'm really tempted for my cramped city use but you have to lease the batteries at around £50 per month and each 50 mile charge will cost £1 at today's electricity prices. So your running costs are not that much cheaper. It doesn't bother me that the Twizzy isn't really a car but a four wheel scooter as it is a tool I am looking for to do a job not a label! 

 Renault Twizy - funky little urban electric car

Audi is bringing out an electric car, I think in 2013 which looks interesting but not very good for British urban traffic calming road humps!

Audi electric concept car

In the meantime I am continuing to work on my Raffo Belva sports car re-build project, with the help of a local garage. I'm putting a 2 litre Vauxhall diesel engine into a plastic bodied car of half the donor vehicle's weight and as aerodynamic as a straight plank of wood being placed along the front bonnet and windscreen. It will run on vegetable oil. No leaks here or complex computerised car management system other than basic engine management ECU. All the other electric's will be carefully and individually wired by me and sited right where I can access every single fuse and relay in the cockpit.

Raffo Belva no 7 being re-designed and re-built by Jeremy Broun

If I applied the design strategy car designers/manufacturers wilfully employ to my furniture designs I would be a millionaire in 'after car' costs. I might even use their sales slogans. One manufacturer's website caption is 'if you are vague about ethics you know where to focus your attention...' or words to that effect. 

The fixer - part 2

     I removed an earlier entry called 'The Fixer' about Jimmy Saville

    It was obviously written before the shocking revelations and like countless other people I immediately condemned him. I still do if what is alleged about him is proven to be true.

   However, I will use this space just to say that horrendous though the evidence seems to be stacking up (I write this in october 2012) the question I cannot help but ask, apart from the obvious one of why nobody did anything about his alleged exploits over four decades (what!!!), is why is it that he achieved so much in helping so many people when so many others failed?  Put another way, what kind of person does it take to get things to happen other than a Jimmy Saville because he was apparently 'unique'! 

      There is something in this that also reflects on society and society is made up of individuals like you and me.  I happen to know someone who's life was probably saved by Jimmy Saville over twenty years ago in his arranging an 'ambulance' service from Italy back to the UK. The person may have suffered dire consequences but for the initiative of Mr Saville where timing was crucial.
      There must be other examples of how people's lives had been changed in more than trivial ways? This is nothing to do with Jimmy Saville the alleged sex fiend but Jimmy Saville 'The Fixer' as he was known for decades. Are any of the journalist vultures asking any of the people's who's lives were fixed in a positive way what they feel right now? Difficult and awkward probably for them not to speak of the burden of shame now resting on his family, but our focus is to crucify. It is slightly alarming that we do this before evidence has actually been firmly established.

   Is it not possible to say yes these are terrible crimes but yes he also did good and raised millions of pounds? In the 21st Century are we not capable of dual thought?

There is also a sinister thread of hypocrisy running through the almost medaeival lynch mentality fevering the nation right now when domestic violence is at an all time high and we still have bankers who have ruined the lives of many.  

   My little understanding of Christianity (that is supposed to be our core religion in Britain) is that good can come from evil. To my simple mind I could imagine a conflict of God and the Devil fighting over the same will and agreeing to compromise and this evil and good can go alongside each other. The same energy of nuclear fission provides light and warmth and also kills. There is no light without shadow, no black without white, but plenty of shades of grey. 

The JKB Window Hook Roof Platform

         The JKB Window Hook roof platform is a custom built device for hooking onto a dormer window and resting on the roof tiles in order to undertake repairs/maintenance. It saves hundreds of pounds in scaffolding costs and can be stored away in two separate parts after use. Made from stout 18mm exterior grade plywood and sandwiched at the hook in three thicknesses of material, it is screwed and glued together and lacquered with two coats of matt polyurethane varnish and one top coat of yacht varnish. Job done!

The JKB Window Hook platform. Copyright Jeremy Broun 2012

      It took longer to design the concept than build it and its hook profile and general angled geometry is made to measure for my particular roof. I had already constructed a roof ladder (see my You Tube WOODOMAIN channel) from a couple of bundles of batten so this is also a very low cost solution for servicing my roof and dormer window. Both sections of the platform are 48" long, conveniently coming out of an eight by four sheet and it makes lifting into position and storage easier. 
     

Looking down on the platform from the dormer window flat roof

        There is an extra hitch point where the two holes are to anchor the end of the platform to the dormer roof upright. I used rope but envisage constructing a metal strap that simply hooks into place. The two sections are fixed together in situ with stout stainless steel screws with the larger hole as a viewing hole to locate the screw. Each section is light enough to manoeuvre through the dormer window opening and fix into place on the roof and the hooks amply clear the window sill and flashing if repairs are needed there, which in my case they did. 

The platform is made in two sections for ease of mobility and storage

       If you are a woodworker/housebuilder who would like to use my idea all I ask for is an acknowledgment or better still buy my Routing DVDs (from WOODOMAIN.com) as a thank you for my ideas. It would cost me too much to patent many of my ideas but I believe in the universal law of what goes around comes around. My device may be featured in a future issue of 'British Woodworking' magazine as an example of resourceful woodworking. I intend doing my own roof repairs for as long as I am active. If you use the idea and make a similar window hook platform I cannot accept any responsibility for its safety, not least because build quality is important. If you are 25 stone heavy obviously the way I have built mine would not be strong enough. Safety always comes first and it is imperative to use an anchored safety harness when working on a roof.





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Passion for design

        Probably the most successful British chair of the 20th Century is the polypropylene  stacking chair by Robin Day for Hille International. The tooling costs were around £60,000 and it retailed at under £5. I was always inspired as a designer maker by the giants of mass produced innovation and found myself an increasingly reluctant member of an exclusive social club - British Designer Makers from the 1970's onwards.  I did work on the shop floor of a furniture factory as a trainee designer in 1973 but found the British mass production furniture industry depressing in the 1970's.

Stacking chair by Robin Day for Hille (1966)

      However, another icon of late 20th Century furniture design recently caught my eye in a local 'junk' shop which was a must have for me - four 'Supporto' chairs by Fred Scott, also for Hille International. I only want one for my quirky office but I am having to buy all four and hope to pass the others on. This is the classic original ergonomically designed modern office chair but most in my heritage city would be ignorant of its existence.

                             

'Supporto' chair by Fred Scott for Hille (1979)

      It is not the first time I have picked up a scoop locally. A couple of decades ago. I picked up a classic Harry Bertoia chair from my local market for £5 and use that in my home. Who is Harry Bertoia you ask? We know who Simon Colwell is or that playboy Harry who poses naked on the front of our respected tabloid newspapers. Oh yes, his cousin (uncle) David called on me a few years ago asking me to make some of his to furniture and emboss his Royal stamp on my craftsmanship.

                                 

Harry Bertoia chair (1957)

         But back to the plot - my passion for furniture design is re-kindled when I see a classic modern chair and my home is just too full of chairs so I am having to build a separate sealed storage area for my micro museum! The very first chair I made was actually a copy of 'The Chair' by Hans Wegner and I delighted in spokeshaving the arms which are highly sculptural. I made it out of teak when I was 17 and it was one of my major pieces when I was at Shoreditch College, so I must have made that chair in 1966 and all it needs today is a fresh smearing of Danish oil. The cane seat is still immaculate despite occasional use over the years. At a recent lecture by the furniture designer John Makepeace he referred to using silver wire as being 'more substantial' than cane for the seating of a chair, but his chair is younger than my copy of Hans Vegner's chair, but has noticeable cracks on its ebony joints! Am I allowed to challenge 'The Father of British Furniture Design'?! Is furniture lacking critical debate?

'The chair' by Hans Vegner (1949)

I think it is important to know our history. I visited the Cheltenham Celebration of Craftsmanship exhibition last week and apart from feeling somewhat let down by the chairs on show (the public chair competition), noticed a table by a maker that was an exact copy of a table by a designer maker friend of mine - John Coleman in the 1980's. I actually could not bring myself to mention this to the exhibitor so here I am referring to it on my blog. But surely in this age of 'graduate masters degree' furniture maker they have studied their history, especially the recent history of designer makers? In my Furniture Today DVDs the history is detailed with hundreds of images of furniture design and many colleges stock my DVDs. 

Veneered Table by John Coleman 

'Maker Designers Today' exhibition at Camden Arts Centre 1984

         I am certainly not accusing this maker of blatant copying as the design possesses a certain structural rationale that could be conceived by more than one mind. But in a previous exhibition there was a submission for not just a direct copy of a classic design but the design itself, a stool was used and the top just re-veneered in burn walnut which stuck out like a sore thumb! I alerted the exhibition curator but goodness me I am not a member of the design Police but just dumbfounded at - ignorance? 

Laminated birch stool by Alvar Aalto (1933)

          The wonderful thing about furniture design history is that it may be far from popular culture but it has a lasting and satisfying dimension to it and something to pass on. On my 90th birthday I intend holding a retrospective exhibition of my furniture designs and also show my chair collection which one day will be handed down.

  Cantilever chair in elm by Jeremy Broun (1984)

 inspired by Marcel Breuer's 'Chair with no legs' (1927)

          The designer Ron Arad once said to me 'a chair should have a very good reason for being'*. I would agree with that. It would be arrogant to claim total originality as we all know ideas come from somewhere and I think at least if one is inspired by one design to create another, the source should at least be acknowledged as a respect for that designer. But what does that silly old-fashioned term 'respect ' mean today? 

* 'The Chair' video 1990 (now on DVD) by Jeremy Broun

What is wrong with fairness?

            Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg says the very rich should help a bit more in dipping into their pockets to help the country during these dark times. He is referring to those with 'very considerable' wealth and for a limited period. The opposition says he is 'taking British people for fools'.  

           Who are the 'British people' today ? I see an increasing divide between the considerably wealthy and the considerably struggling to the point of obscenity. The opposition blow the conservative trumpet claiming that raising tax will drive the very rich abroad, but hang on, aren't they aware that there is nowhere to go! There is a global recession with even China struggling right now! And isn't the labour party about fairness for all?
         When Nick Clegg made this statement I immediately thought of Hitachi Power Tools. I am, after all, a carpenter not a politician. During the last deep recession in Japan, all the global Hitachi partners ploughed back every penny of profit into their head office to help Japan get back on its feet. I know this because at the time I had close liaisons with Hitachi Power Tools UK as they had generously supplied me with tools for the writing of my books and production of videos. Suffice to say the cordless drills and stout jigsaws I still use today. As a result of tightening their belt Hitachi fell slightly behind regarding brand promotion in the UK but the proof is in the durability of their products.

A Hitachi jigsaw given to Jeremy Broun in 1989 and still in use in 2012

         I think the stupidity is in this continued blind self-interest in Britain and blatant greed and justification of each faction (political) when the country is in a very serious mess indeed and tightening the belt is what a generation who remember the last war will relate to.  What is wrong with fairness?

Damaged goods

        Watching the Paralympics adverts makes me a little angry. It is not just that in almost every other field Health & safety would have something to say about two people wilfully colliding into each other in a potentially dangerous wheeled device,  but that to lose a limb and fight against all odds is considered highly admirable and commendable and yet  to be 'wheel bound' with depression is a taboo. Strong words to compare the state of depression to a physical paralysis but actually its true. I pick up on the anger that some physically disabled people have and perhaps I am guessing to suggest that anger is a motivating force for some of these athletes. 

        I was very fortunate to be born a healthy physical specimen. I have even escaped broken bones from a high speed motorcycle spill and today I limp with an Achilles heel (badminton) injury trying to walk my dog. But the greatest Achilles heel injury is the lack of motivation to start another Monday, another week. I am trying to complete a dormer window repair on my roof and put the last few pieces of timber cladding up. There was a time in my younger days when I was at least three times quicker than the average woodworker. Today it is taking me hours to just cut with a saw two pieces of softwood.

Who is going to repair your roof when you get old? 

        Imagine not being able to tie up your shoe laces. That is how depression can affect the mind, an otherwise agile and capable mind. I am not saying that today I cannot tie up my boot laces to walk my dog but the ritual has reminded me that actually at the depth of paralysing depression I don't know how to tie up my shoe laces. No doctor has ever asked me to perform the task. It would not enter their heads that this seemingly automatic ritual is a highly complex motor skill and quite relevant to some forms of depression. Instead the question is what medication worked for you before. The greatest act of will is to keep off damaging medication. 

A shoe rack designed by Jeremy Broun for Good Woodworking magazine readers to make (1990's)

      Healthy normal people take so many things for granted - that they are loveable and can love and have a right and expect to be loved. Some go through life never knowing what it is like not to be loved. Of course everyone is damaged in some way but if you never had a mother to show you what love is and a father who beat the shit out of you, how on earth can you learn it? In the playground? I don't think so.

       I am angry also today because I tried hard to follow the Christian doctrine throughout my life and for many years was encouraged to believe in God, the creator. Am I allowed to ask a childlike question: 'Well, who created God?' So we go through the ritual of counting blessings and cognitive therapy (that is so f..ing impossible to do) and going through a list of positive affirmations we arrive at the simple conclusion - to take each moment as it comes. 

       Perhaps wood is a gift from God to channel creative energy into or is it a chance material there for its own purpose but we got our hands on it? I am at least confident that I can build anything in wood (albeit on  a good day) and I may be forgotten as a craftsman but I have not finished making yet. Perhaps one has to endure the bad days (years) to look forward to the better ones.

    Depression may be a taboo but my observation is that people who suffer mental anguish often have an unusual awareness that makes their condition even more isolating. I came across a startling piece of furniture design on a website - a sculptural chair in stainless steel and was staggered to learn it sells for around £70,000. No wonder I am a forgotten craftsman! But I won't forget my ideals.

     An acquaintance knocked on my door last week asking to stay overnight in order to see his young children the next day. He had been kicked out of his nest by his partner and was in a terrible state. I had performed guitar gigs with him and his creative career is now on the verge of blossoming. I encouraged him to hold onto his creativity but his reliance on a 'relationship' was very apparent. It took me many many years to learn the lesson that I did not need another half to make me feel a whole person.  A very painful lesson and even more painful in the realisation this 'whole' person is full of holes! But my friend's creativity (like mine) is a precious gift and all I can do is encourage him in whatever small way I can that creativity pulls you through. 

       So, my dear reader, whoever you are, I feel a little better getting this off my chest. One of my tasks today is to process a substantial order of my woodworking/furniture making DVDs to send to the USA. There is no logical explanation that I cannot be motivated to respond instantly to somebody who values my work and says in an email 'I look forward to learning from you'. Lets hope my DVDs will not arrive as 'damaged goods'

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A unique collection of instructional and documentary style DVDs

Furniture Today 3 - showing the best of British contemporary furniture

against a historical backcloth. (2012)

Andrew Varah

        Andrew Varah died in July 2012, delivering something of a shock to the British bespoke furniture making community where he had become a distinguished figure; the bloke I recall from my student days, who always sat at the top table, and where after a late start in the furniture making world, he arrived. It was little surprise he was ambitious as he was the son of Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans suicide telephone line, member of MENSA and his mother, head of the Mothers Union Europe. Andy was a triplet and identical twin.

        I first met Andrew in 1963 as a fellow student at the legendary Shoreditch Teacher Training College in Surrey. In our second year Andrew got me a room in the sought after old college building alongside his close mates Geoff Buckland, John Eustace and Max Carter. I suppose the obvious thing we all had in common was that we spoke without an accent and so it was probably a class thing. I guess in retrospect we were an elite group although I saw ourselves as different rather than better than the main core of trainee handicraft teachers. We tended to be more independent minded.
           Shoreditch College was a fantastic training not just in woodworking skills but in other craft disciplines such as metalworking, basketmaking, pottery and bookbinding and we had the very best practitioners in the country as tutors. My God those were the days and I shed a tear on the very last day of my training looking over Runnymede from the college campus, thinking it will never be as good as this again. Shoreditch was renowned for supplying not only the best teachers but the pranks that went on at the college were legendary.
         From one of the towers in our residential building I recall being roped in by an errant third year student to spray one of the college tutors on duty with a fire water hose and later hiding in Andrew's wardrobe while the search party sifted through the study bedrooms. Andrew was sitting in bed wearing a nightcap, reading a book, innocently pointing to the open window which happened to be four storeys up and telling the tutor 'maybe they went that way'. I was nearly kicked out as an example to other students but I went on to gain a Distinction on the Advanced Woodwork course while Andrew became social secretary and was out with the girls rather than pushing his cabinetmaking skills. 
      Andy helped me buy my first Morgan three-wheeler and we drove out to secluded pubs in Virginia Water in it and even attended a party in Surrey held by John Gregson the actor. The three-wheeler had no reverse gear and on one occasion we plunged through somebody's garden fence in Bagshot. We shared many fun experiences lasting into our thirties. 

The first 1933 Morgan three-wheeler arrives on the Shoreditch College campus
in 1962, causing a sensation amongst students and staff. 

I took Andy salmon poaching on wild Scottish rivers (my home was in Scotland) and on our last day of the trip I said  'I can't send you back to London empty handed'. While my older sister stood lookout for the bailiff, I hooked the salmon and Andrew landed it. 
     

I hooked the salmon and Andy landed it

 - an apt description of our furniture making careers. (1968)

On a furniture travel scholarship abroad my car was stolen and he offered to drive over to Holland to pick me up. I managed to get an old banger and arrived back from a 24-hour drive straight from Italy to his barn workshops near Rugby and he was the first to see all the exciting items of innovative furniture I had been given.

The old banger loaded with gifts from Artek, Cassina Artemide etc 

- first port of call Andrew Varah's pad 1979

     At the beginning of our careers Andrew and I taught in tough London schools and met up in our respective school workshops after school hours to brainstorm designs for school projects. We were pioneers of design in schools a decade before Design Craft Technology became officially part of the curriculum. We both left teaching after two years and Andy went to work in Zambia running a furniture factory. He invited me over to be his designer but my phobia for injections stopped that. He returned around 1974 but in preceding years had written to me many times asking what it was like to be a 'designer maker' and saying he wanted to do what I was doing back in England. 
    He set up as a solo maker and so our contact was much closer. I visited him many times at Little Walton, mucking into the renovations of his barn workshop. He had a fantastic pad while I was working in a tiny underground city workshop without natural light. A strange contrast as at the time he was an unknown and I was well acknowledged in the field by galleries and magazines. Around 1979
I introduced him to the Prestcote Gallery and remember his very first exhibit there, an inlaid table in ash. It was a electric time as the new boys exhibited alongside the old boys; A Fred Baier chair sitting next to an Edward Barnsley table.

An ash table by Andrew Varah circa 1976

Perhaps ashamed of my own somewhat modest workshop I turned down an opportunity in 1989 to be filmed for a regional television craft documentary and introduced the film director Trevor Hill to Andrew Varah who at that time had just taken on the genius woodworker Andrew Whately from John Makepeace's workshop. I think it was Andrew's first television exposure and at that time a rare insight into the work of furniture designer makers. Jan Leeming, ex News reader was the presenter. 

A chair by Andrew Varah around the time of the first television feature 

     Andrew delighted in pleasing his clients and working to their needs, often adding whims drawn from different architectural periods making his actual designs somewhat derivative and overplayed in clever craftsmanship in my opinion. I felt he became a bit of an 'untouchable' in terms of design critique but then there are no critics of bespoke modern furniture! If it were a West End play the performances would be torn apart by ruthless critics (Kiera Knightly playing Anna Karenina)! But design apart, Andrew Varah became a formidable maker and guiding light to a new blossoming generation of furniture designer makers. It was the late Alan Peters (who also trained at Shoreditch College) who said in 1974 this is surely the most difficult craft to sustain.  
        I still have some prime quality flitch cut English oak Andrew sold me at cost price in the year of the drought in 1976 and some Rio rosewood veneer he gave me on the same occasion. In our halcyon days Andy would often get to meet the girls I dated and would say 'I can't believe how you can pull the most beautiful birds' yet he could pull the most prestigious clients and was really in a different league running a furniture business and employing talented young craftsmen, many of whom stayed for decades.
 There was obviously rivalry between Andrew nyself. Even as students he once told me he could run as fast without training as his identical twin brother Mike who was running 800 yards for Britain. I told him he was arrogant and challenged him to run around the college track. He beat me after 26 laps and I was in the college athletics team and he wasn't! Curiously as my furniture 'career' suffered because of depression in my life I once admitted to Andy I had often phoned up his old man's outfit the Samaritans. I got the impression Andy did not get to see much of his father in his youth. Despite our more recent fall outs, we exchanged an amicable conversation at our last chance meeting at an exhibition in Cheltenham where we were both judges for different awards. 
      I made a film including him called 'Five Ways to Fashion Wood' in 1989 and a light-hearted clip called 'Three wise men' in 2005:  

   

Inevitably Andy and I followed different paths, but nothing can take away our early formative and fun years.  Varah RIP. 

Fear of wood

     Many years ago a well known award winning local architect  was tragically killed whilst chainsawing a tree on his land. It fell on top of him and one immediately thought how could this happen to such an intelligent well organised person but it also served as a reminder of the yin and yang of life, that wood is a provider but one could also potentially die from a splinter. 

      For much of my life I was blessed with a wonderful gift of confidence to do anything with wood, I had no fears and nearly twenty years ago when totally re designing and re building the roof of my home I also built timber scaffolding out of two by two which I left up for nearly a decade on the back of my house! 

     In a previous blog I described my near escape from death last November when I clambered onto the roof to do some repairs and found I did not have the strength to pull myself up onto the dormer window roof. Well I found the strength hence I am here to write this but am now faced with the same challenge of sorting the roof out and building a stable platform. The problem is I am terrified of setting foot on the 45 degree roof pitch quite apart from avoiding looking down four storeys. I used to be a rock climber at school and followed the A team up the Derbyshire gritstone Black Rocks in just gym shoes and no ropes. I never experienced this fear before and although I am sketching out designs for a timber scaffolding structure to hook over the ridge I have the fear for the first time in my life that wood will fail me, that however I construct the scaffolding the fibres might tear, the screws might sheer etcetera etcetera. 

     Fear is a dangerous thing! So I am provaricating/procastinating and making extremely slow progress and fearing the very thing that has given me joy and confidence since I was sixteen - wood. So as you go through life, not knowing why you are here or how long you will be here for and stepping outside the social conditioning of leaving the nest and creating your own little nest and following the conveyor belt of life, drinking beer and following football teams on the way what else is there?!

    Some might stop to ponder at how life seems to deal out certain cards at different times and that some of those cards maybe interpreted as lessons. Is it merely a game of Monopoly at the rolling of dice? 'Go to gaol', 'collect a wife' or 'collect diabetes as you pass'? Of course one of the lessons taught is you can't take it with you but obviously not a lesson learned as money is seemingly even more of a God today. The late Paul Getty, richest oilman on the planet in the 70's (whose art foundation once purchased one of my furniture designs) had a deep fear of poverty and brought himself up from the gutter, so fear can be a great motivator as well as energy seeper. Certainly thinking too much can be a serious damper. 

    On my observations even the most clever people appear to think very little about major life events in the sense of cause and effect and just as the 'nature versus nurture' argument persists I also wonder if being master of your destiny or victim of fate is a similar puzzle? Certainly no one I know is in control of their lives but it keeps you sane to think you are. Now, lets get over this silly fear of wood and start thinking positive again. In fact, better than that - get back to the doing.        

Every dog has its day

     I suspect my late sister Jill was right when she once said to me 'every dog has its day'. Certainly in my own field as a furniture designer maker the traditional modesty that goes alongside being talented with your hands is blown apart today by those who are masters at self promotion and become legends in their own lifetime (and curiously behind a personna of enormous modesty!) But will history quickly forget them and who indeed will the future historians write about in a hundred years time? Does it matter to us now and who, then, is the judge, especially as successive historians fall into the journalism trap and make scoops to get noticed?

    Of course, first and foremost you have to be true to yourself and have the inner strength or quiet confidence of commitment that  the path you believe in, and in my own case I guess it is the 'small is beautiful' road, you follow, irrespective of popular fashion or whatever the dominant trend is. The trend  in England is for very expensive exclusive prestigious furniture which for years I have argued has a direct correlation to our antiquated class system. IKEA could not have been born in England and yet paradoxically the north London IKEA store became one of its most successful! When the eighth in line to the British throne visited me circa 1985 with a view to my making his designs that would carry his Royal stamp. I could (should?) have done the intelligent thing and put the price of my own unique work up extraordinarily. I was, after all, earmarked as one of the top 40 makers in the country on this occasion and since then, young makers have appeared from nowhere asking forty five grand for a piece of bespoke furniture.

   I can confidentially and not boastfully say there is nothing in wood I could not make.  After all, at the age of 17 I gained and A grade at A level woodwork and have used my hands ever since. With my training and vast experience working wood and keen eye for precision I could have followed the trend  (in the field I once was a pioneer in) and focussed on extremely expensive woods, gold inlays, immaculate workmanship, prestigious clients, prestigious Guild marks, etc etc, .... but I chose not to. The price I paid was being so quickly forgotten. The lesson I learned was that the media will make and break, create and forget and the questions I continue to ask are how does one deal with ego and is it just ego? In my case it was slightly different. It was the need to overcome seventeen years of abuse and negation from a cruel father. To be noticed and acknowledged is probably every child's right, so it may not be just a question of ego, but a basic human need.

   Wimbledon champions come and go and those who want it badly enough will eventually win the crown. Ageism is certainly rampant in Britain and what is worse is most 'senior citizens' themselves feel on the scrap heap with little to offer. What a dreadful term a senior citizen! As far as I am concerned I'm still on my gap year (another curious commercial construct) and it may continue into my nineties. I haven't started living yet and have a lot of catching up to become even  'normal' if it is ever possible my life could follow a conventional path! But whilst every dog has its day there is also still fight in the dog. Without fight there is no point but the day may yet come to pass.

A good O Level man

           I heard in the news that the Education minister wants to take us is back to Fifties Britain and somebody mentioned that GCE O levels are for clever children. Oh no, not what I recall. When I was at school I scraped five O levels on the first hit and another two on the resit. I actually failed O level Woodwork but got 85% a term later and two terms later grade A at A level (normally a two year course). I put that down to the woodwork teacher being sacked and an excellent completely eccentric but inspiring woodwork teacher taking over. However, sport and woodwork were what I excelled at. I felt pretty stupid generally and my sixth form classmates went on to University. I think you needed five O levels to get into Sixth form. Nowadays you will more likely get into university if you played with Transformers (killing machines) in your childhood.  It does seem that anybody can get to university so I am inclined to believe that standards were much higher in my youth. But more than that, there was a sense of history that was part of general knowledge that has been lost today. Churchill is an insurance company and the colour of Cheryl Cole's knickers is general knowledge.

         Curiously the words GCE O level triggered a memory - a few years (decades) ago I applied to be a part-time tutor at a prestigious furniture college in Dorset, made famous because one of its students was a nephew to the Queen. At the interview a psychologist had been hired! I remember during my written examination (!) him jangling with coins in his pocket which was making me feel nervous. He came over and criticised the way I held my pen in my left hand. I am left-handed as many creative people are! Later at what I can only describe as an intimidating interview he suddenly announced 'I see you haven't stated your grades at O level on your application form'. I was completely stunned by this and being the gentleman I am, I refrained from saying 'Oh I'm sorry I didn't realise you were looking for a good O level man' and promptly getting up and walking out. My highly accomplished artist sister (Barbara Broun) later suggested that is exactly what I should have done. The fact that I had won numerous regional and national awards since school seemed to slip the psychologist's attention! 

     When you look at the careers of people such as the late Paul Ghetty (once the richest man in the world), Lord Stokes (who was tea boy but became SEO of British Leyland) and Alan Sugar, one is reminded of the saying:

'Examinations are for failures'.
    
   

Which Commandment?

    Busking with my guitar late last evening I clashed with another street performer who does a 'Funny Walk' act in my home city reigning in a lot of people and also a lot of money every evening. When I say 'clash' I mean I had to stop playing my guitar to tourists sitting outside a cafe as this guy suddenly appeared to do his ten minute hilarious(?) jokes expecting to me to be brushed aside. I was actually there first! Dancing to my music was a Columbian guy I know who happens to be a devout Christian. He thought this other street entertainer was extremely rude (a view echoed later on by some of the cafe punters who spoke with us) to expect me to suddenly stop my guitar playing that they were enjoying.

     My friend then listened to the funny guy's jokes around the Abbey poking fun at the carved figure of Jesus Christ as being gay to which my friend was extremely offended and went up to the entertainer and told him he was being blasphemous and anti the Bible etcetera. I may not share my friend's fundamentalist views but I do respect his right to object to some cheap laugh a second offending his religion. This religion, actually, that is called Christianity has been the core religion of our nation historically and offers a humanistic code of behaviour that arguably, because it is now so fashionable to attack Christianity, is in demise and I believe is part of the breakdown in British society and certainly the abandonment of many decent values. As yet we have nothing better to replace it. No wonder the East call us decadent.  

    Curiously had this entertainer delivered his jokes in many Arab countries he would have been publicly stoned rather than rewarded. I don't go to Church anymore and have my own private views/uncertainties about whether there is a God or not but it is sad there is a lack of respect which clearly this street entertainer failed to have for a fellow street entertainer. I didn't actually mind stopping playing for ten minutes. The guy might have slipped me a fiver as a tip for the inconvenience but I guess the word 'greed' would have no currency with someone who mocks Christianity!  

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Krays had a mum

     Yes, Britain's legendary gangsters had a mum and anyone watching the film on television this evening would see the power of a mum. Without a mum you face a world blindfolded; a long and silent journey where you find your own path and hear just your own screams when you lose your way.

     Paradoxically in the film the mum teaches her boys not to fight each other but to stick together and fight 'them' out there. Without their mum reprimanding them for knocking the shit out of each other in a boxing ring - I mean without a mum at all, how would life have panned out for them? Why is the mum (played by Billie Whitelaw) actually the central character in the film? Perhaps it is neither here nor there that the mum of the Krays' is so powerful and that only I perceive it as such because I had no mum and I fought the world with bare knuckles on my own. I took some bruisings but cannot ever recall losing a fight. The number of times I would plead with an aggressor who was provoking me and presumably thought I was easy meat, to back off, not because I was scared of them but scared of my own strength fuelled by a deep rage that they had a mum and I didn't.  

    Only once did I ever walk away from a fight when two thugs picked on me and a mate when we were about 30 years old because we were 'posh'. My mate, who grew up in Hong Kong with knives on the street, raised his fists but I grabbed him and yelled 'run'. I knew in a split second by the look in these guys' eyes they would have killed us. It is all in the eyes and nothing to do with size. Some times in life you perservere and fight (other people's battles as well) and other times you just walk away.  

Class War

     I heard on Radio Four this morning about a rapper songwriter called Plan B, announcing that if Sexism and Racism is not accepted publicly why not Classism also? Interesting question. When I was a kid I got a beating from my father for speaking with a West country accent that I acquired to avoid a beating from the kids on the street! Indeed a few years ago I found I was victim to blatant classism in a technical college where I was teaching that ultimately cost me my job (I swore at a student when the culture amongst the staff was to use four letter language!) and I was informed there was no CURRENT legislation in place to argue a case. I was teaching carpentry part-time and both students and staff clearly discriminated against me because I was 'posh' and stood out like a sore thumb in the building site arena. 

    After all I must be posh to listen to Radio Four but actualy I have argued for years that classism is rampant in Britain and just because it is subtle does not mean it is not still very powerful and it also works both ways. 

   I would suggest that actually it can be an advantage to have a strong working class accent (television is full of it) and the one thing the British Working Class has in common with the Aristocracy is a strong and proud sense of social identity. On that basis one could almost argue that class is a good thing! The more 'mobile' middle class is the victim of consumersim as it trades on insecurity and dissatisfaction! However, the radio discussion prompted me to dig out a chapter from my book 'Missing Jean' (originally titled 'Glass Wall') and a chapter called 'Class War' going back to when I was about nine years old: 

   

    Trevor Lang lived in a terraced council house a few streets away from our big house in Marlborough. He was small, mean and tough. He was both my best friend and worst enemy. It was class war really. I was the ‘posh’ upper middle class kid who spoke proper and he was the working class tyke who was leader of the pack.  His right hand man Mervyn cycled past me one day and shouted that Trevor was going to beat me up. I told Mervyn to tell Trevor I would take him on any day of the week. Well, Trevor chose a good day as I returned from Scouts dressed in my short trousers and tassels on my socks as he confronted me with his gang all dressed in long trousers. Funny how important trousers were in my youth. Long trousers were so grown up and streetwise but father insisted I wore short trousers even when I went to Grammar School and the other boys wore long trousers.

  Trevor jumped out of the bushes with his gang and said “What's this Mervyn tells me you're going to do to me?”  I  managed to stall him by agreeing that Mervyn had got it right as I walked nearer the side gate to our house. I knew the latch of the gate was on the inside and the gate was high so I would need to time things perfectly and make a jump for it. But the talking was running out and Trevor was getting impatient. Curiously there must have been a gentlemanly side to Trevor's character as he refrained from delivering the first blow. He had every opportunity but maybe he would have lost face in front of his gang if he hit me first. He would be a bigger hero if I hit him and then he could finish me off to their cheers.  After all, he was challenging me to stand to my word. 

    I wasn't afraid of the gang as Trevor was tough enough to settle matters one to one, the gang were hangers-on really.  He was itching to engage and my heart was racing faster and faster as we got nearer the side gate of our house. The green painted gate was high and sturdily built and my attention was on the hidden latch behind it and how to get to it quickly.  “Right Trevor” and in a flash I turned round and caught him on the jaw. It knocked him off his feet, it was so sudden. I then scrambled up over the gate as Trevor groaned, got up and lunged at me grabbing my Boy Scout legs with the stupid tassels on my socks. I managed to kick him off. I rushed over to the house where the coal shed was and began hurling large chunks of coal at the gate as he tried to climb over. I probably emptied the entire coal bin in a matter of seconds. My hands were oily, black and sore.

     Amidst all the rumpus the back door was suddenly thrown open and father stood sternly on the doorstep powering over me, silhouetted by the bare dangling electric kitchen lamp behind. The smell of Dana's cooking scones for tomorrow’s high tea wafted out. “What the hell's going on?” I immediately burst into tears at the relief of refuge but instead my father roared “Fight him like a man” and slammed the door on me. I hid crouching in the coal shed interrniitedly slinging last chunks of coal towards the green gate fearing Trevor would climb over. I probably got the beating from Trevor on another day but strangely time would pass and Trevor and I would be mates again.

   One day Trevor was pushing me in a pram up the high street while I was firing my cap gun. “Blimey, that's my stepmother coming” I said to Trevor. He quickly pulled a mackintosh over me as Dana approached on the same pavement. “Hello Trevor, what are you doing out of school at this time of day?”  I had blown my school dinner money on caps for my cap gun. Had Dana spotted me under the raincoat and this matter been reported back to my father a few more garden canes would have been broken for sure.  I invited Trevor to my ninth birthday party. While the washing up was being done after tea he was busy beating me up in the garden because I had not given him a big slice of the cake. Veronica (my older sister) hurled open an upstairs window and screamed “Get off him Trevor” in a deliberate West country accent.

   So there it was, ducking and diving between beatings from my father and kids on the street, when I eventually got an all important place at the grammar school - we wore green uniform and were called 'the grammar grubs' by the blue uniformed secondary Modern school kids who waited at the school gates to engage in fights with us. British Class war at its finest! 

   Has much changed actually in Britain since my childhood? I chose to design and make really innovative modern wood furniture as an adult trying over decades to make my furniture accessible to anybody interested in good modern design only to find I have been engulfed in a class/social game for all these years where high expense and exclusivity defines the field! Not my choosing and not my philosophy and it is probably because of classism that my furniture designs are not really acknowledged in the way they were in the Seventies when for a brief period cash flowed more easily across the social class system! Now if your work is too cheap it is looked down upon!