SOMETIMES ONE HAS TO HIDE AWAY!


January – a classic time for feeling the blues – especially this January, with its daily overdose of dark grey days – and layer after layer of cloud banked up into the sky. Testing times too – keeping up one’s spirits!

Last week-end we organised a space in which to escape the dark torment. I ran a course, in Sprint Mill, on making stick-chairs. Four folk had booked in. We hid ourselves away in a big corner of the mill – stoked up the old pot-belly stove with dry sawdust and shavings saved from processing green oak cleft posts. The stove warmed our souls – comforted us.

Out came the drawer knives, the shave horses, the side axes, the froes, the tenon cutters and rounders – all of these tools ‘powered’ by human energy/muscle, probably the most neglected form of renewable energy on the planet! The four chair makers, under my guidance, shaved and whittled away at lengths of freshly cut hazel coppice, gleaned from our two acre coppice wood, Oaks Wood.

Making stick-chairs is a genre all on its own! – a really testing skill relying on the eye for accuracy, rather than a measure, during construction. No machine gets anywhere near the process. Furthermore each part of the chair is carefully selected, using the natural curves provided by nature, rather than resorting to steam bending. Drilling the mortice holes at the right angle is the trickiest bit. Our chairs came together via a process of intense concentration, every stage being double checked, to avoid going astray.

Stick-chair-chit-chat ensued! We claimed that our chair-making skill perhaps more challenging than the rigid discipline of machine made items. We thought the greatest delight of all was completing a practical outcome completely free of fossil fuel driven mechanical aids. Stick-chairs could still be crafted during a power cut! We also wondered how far our carbon-consumption-free skills could reach into other basic essential areas. Gardening, cooking, farming, forestry, transport, could all be taken on board, with special effort and innovation, being a resolve to break free from our oh so short-term over-dependence/exploitation/consumption reliance on finite fossil fuels.

We found another big spin-off too – real ENJOYMENT via the chair making process – a sort of personal freedom, liberation, detachment, excitement, and fulfilment seemed to grow out of this pioneering approach.

In this context I was intrigued to read about the ‘Soul Man’ in last week’s Society Guardian, namely Satish Kumar, who calls himself an ‘Earth Pilgrim.’ His essential ethos is to help save the planet via hiding away the gloomy prediction brigade and putting in its place solutions based on quality, practical and enjoyable actions. Satish claims that “The happiest people I have ever seen in Britain, or anywhere, are those who live close to the land and people who use their hands – crafts people. All over the world they transform the world. They effect transformation. They restore the dignity of work by hand.”

So, our cosy hidey-hole in Sprint Mill felt like part of Satish’s vision. Certainly we all found, via our heart-felt attentiveness, a degree of real dignity, connectedness and peace of mind. And that’s quite an achievement to reach on a flat, cold, dark, depressing January week-end!