A woodworker in his garden element

After collecting Helena from her Friday afternoon job, I wandered towards town along Horns road to visit Dave C.. I met Dave when I first became a town councillor as he had been one for some years, but he retired to concentrate on his paid work and I don't see him so regularly.

Dave joined blip for a while but found it didn't suit him, which is a shame as he took some very fine pictures, having been a keen photographer all his life. Last summer he sold a wonderful zoom to me, which I have been loving ever since, as he was down sizing his camera equipment and no longer wanted a dslr.

I went back to him last week, when I needed to use a wider angled zoom for the photo project for Stroud Preservation Trust, and he kindly lent me another Canon L series lens. Today I took it back having enjoyed learning how to best use it. Dave had told me he would be working at the back of his garden, which I could get access to from Horns Road.

When I arrived he was in the process of splitting ash wood for a new woodworking project related to the Woodcraft Folk movement, which he and his kids have been involved with locally for some time. He had bought a shed in which he could set up his lathe and other hand built equipment from which he has built chairs and other household objects including beautiful hand carved wooden salad spoons.

The light was really poor in the shade of the garden's fruit trees and the nearly setting sunlight. I wanted to grab a photo of him at work, so this is my best effort, showing him splitting long pieces of ash which will become components of other word working equipment he wants to give for others use at the weekend at the local Hawkwood college. His wooden mallet is hitting a heavy and very sharp metal tool to cleave the ash in regular shapes. He did explain the technical names for the tools but I have already forgotten them! The picture is sharp, as here on my computer I can read the led time on his wrist watch. but the movement as he hammered away has blurred the picture somewhat.

Dave has recently become interested in Permaculture, a system of design, and is now on a regular course to become a permaculture designer, something I did about twenty years ago. About that time, Bill Mollison, the man who 'invented' permaculture, visited Stroud to help a group of local people who wanted to build a sustainable village locally. I stayed with him at a mutual friend's house for three days, which was hugely enlightening for me, in between his giving public talks and workshops, which is something he has been doing all around the world for many decades.

I asked him if I could record an interview without really knowing how I would be able to use it, as I felt it was an opportunity that was extremely rare. He agreed and some weeks later we filmed him here in Stroud and I edited the results into a 90 minute video, with the exciting title, 'Bill Mollison in conversation', and sold it as a vhs tape to the (very) few who were interested at the time in 'meeting' him. Twenty years later Dave, as well as his daughter, are coming to find out about him and benefitting from the products if his teaching.

So as party of the loan of the lens, I have now lent Dave a DVD copy of the little film. I will be very interested to hear what he thinks.

Bill Mollison was on of the earliest recipients of the 'Right Livelihood Award, for outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people', sometimes described as being the alternative Nobel prize. You can see some information they have written about him here.

I also recommend looking at Dave's last blip entry, as it portrays some of his hand carved spoons. His other pictures are worth seeing too. He al;so photographed his home-made 'bodging' or green woodworking equipment here.