My new workshop

My pallet riches

Your friendly upsycho is feeling rather ridiculously pleased with a couple of recent developments. First: I got a workshop. A place where I can keep my growing collection of power tools, and make as much noise and mess as necessary to produce my kreations. It also provides me with the space I need to store all my pallets, raw materials and half-finished projects without posing threat to life, limb and Mr Namasi's patience.

My workshop shares premises with a dog grooming parlour, and the owner of the business has kindly afforded me some space within the store to display some of my kreations. So, if you're a local person, bring your best friend in to Top Dogs Professional Grooming Service in Birchfield Road East (opposite the Co-op), Northampton, and take a look at some of my bits and pieces on display there. You can wait while your dog is groomed, or pop out for a bit of a grooming yourself - there's a barber shop two doors down, and a beauty salon across the road.

Table saw

Band saw

I'm also rather pleased to have acquired - for little more than a song - a table saw and a band saw from a lovely bloke who just wanted his garage space back. He delivered them, set them up, demonstrated them and then insisted on watching me use them, to make sure that I had absorbed enough from his demo to keep all my fingers.

The table saw in particular has been an absolute godsend, as I tackle the pallets and crates that have long awaited my attention.

Some examples of the sort of things I have been producing:

A headboard, made out of upcycled bed slats and painted to match an existing mural (also my handiwork).

Rich colours

A couple of small dog beds made out of an upcycled TV stand (with a few added bits).

Small dog beds for little best friends

A giant dog bed, made out of a pallet and some decking boards

Giant dog bed for a very large best friend

This is a very bed-centric selection of items, I notice. Perhaps this is because I'm feeling a little under the weather today. But I have made some non-bed items:

Funky shelf unit

Rack for dog-walking accessories

I have also worked in mediums other than wood, but more of that another day.

After a long silence...pleading for a little less dissing

I have been uncharacteristically quiet for some time, I know. I had my Mom to stay for six weeks, and we spent that time exploring garden centres, visiting coffee shops, going birding and doing the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword puzzle every day. Things I just don't to do very often because I don't know anyone locally who shares my interest in any of these activities, and - apart from the DT crossword - doing them alone just makes me sad.

When she left - after a couple of false starts, because she flies staff rebate and has to go on standby - the Black Dog took full advantage of the void and moved in with me for a bit.

But I am on the mend.

Since we last spoke, my younger son has moved out of home into his very first flat. Now Mr Namasi and I are rattling around in this overlarge empty nest and using words like 'downsizing'.

Also...the Rio Olympics. Isn't it exciting? Team GB is currently second on the medal table. This little island is doing very well for itself. Usain Bolt is delivering the goods as expected. 'First ever' medals are being won for countries with small populations and large challenges (like Kosovo), and it gets, erm...very dusty in homes all over the world as we watch the victors hearing their anthems being played. And let's not forget the first ever Olympic gold medal to an African American swimmer, in a wonderful 'in your face' to a history of exclusion of black swimmers from local swimming pools until relatively recently. Of course, as a South African expat, your friendly upsycho is delighted at the world record breaking win in the 400m by Wayde van Niekerk.

But what's with all the dissing that's going on? Gabby Douglas's hair has made more of an impression than her gymnastics, for Pete's sake! What the heck is that about? One competitor refused to shake hands with his opponent after their judo bout (and got sent home for his trouble) because they have different religions. One victor failed to place her hand on her heart during the anthem - shock horror. Commentators are being ludicrously sexist: attributing women's wins to their male coaches; making comments like 'she swims like a man' (seriously?!); and calling Simone Biles the next Michael Phelps ("I'm not the next Michael Phelps, I'm the first Simone Biles."); completely overlooking the fact that the Williams sisters have won more than one gold medals than Andy Murray (an oversight Andy Murray was quick to point out).

I don't get it. I find the athletes breathtakingly admirable. Their discipline, dedication and skill are remarkable. I don't give a rat's ass what Gabby's 'edges' (whatever they may be) are doing. Or that x person's body isn't flattered by her (and it's usually a her) clothing. I reckon they're all pretty damned amazing, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Before (cat not included)

I try to counter the negativity with a positive attitude to my work. I'm also participating in a FB meme: posting five positive things about each day for five days.

After (sans cat)

Most of the projects I'm working on at the moment are commissioned pieces. I try to pour love (oh hush!) into what I do, and I hope that it shows. I hope that the clients feel that the investment in their chair/patio set/dog grooming parlour has been worth it, when they see them gain a new lease on life.

Sharing knowledge

Great tit and bullfinch

My Mom is currently visiting us from South Africa. She's a keen birder and what she calls a 'citizen scientist', participating in conservation efforts and so forth. One of the primary reasons for the timing of this visit is to see puffins with their fancy beaks on. I, on the other hand, am an embarrassment when it comes to matters ornithological. We'd be in the garden and my Mom would say, "Ooh! What's that?" referring to the call of some common garden bird, because her significant knowledge doesn't include the birds of the UK. Or she would point at a small speck on a fence post and ask "Is that a great tit or a blue tit?"

And I wouldn't know the answer.

Shameful.

So I went to a social forum called Streetlife - where local people can post questions or recommendations - and put out the call for a local birder to come and spend a couple of hours with my Mom, identifying the calls of the local birds.

Today, a lady called Barbara (also my Mom's name) came and spent two hours with us at the local Summer Leys Nature Reserve, identifying the calls of all the birds we heard, and providing the names of those we saw. We saw fewer than we heard because the full summer foliage hides them, and because they're busy with important things like raising chicks, not sitting out on branches in plain sight.

Blow me down if, after that, she didn't send us a list of all the birds we had seen and heard, as well as a list of others we hadn't seen but might yet see at this time of year.

And she did this all out of the goodness of her heart. Because she is a keen, committed birder, who wanted to help someone else who shares her passion.

I love that attitude!

Crown anniversaries

On 28 May this year, Mr Namasi and I celebrated our 'crown' anniversary: 28 years of marriage. More than half a lifetime.

Today, here I am, at 5:30 in the morning, headed for Heathrow airport with my husband (he's driving, obviously) to collect my Mom, who's coming for a visit.

Seventeen years ago, on this very day: 17 June, I was headed for Heathrow with two little boys to start a new life in the UK. I wasn't driving on that occasion, either. I left that to the pilot. I'm generous like that.

So much has changed since we arrived:

I got ink

My sons have grown up. The elder one works as a duty manager at a well known hotel chain. The younger one is on the management team of an independent sporting goods business.

I have changed. I called time on my previous career and became your friendly Upsycho. I got ink. Yup. Having said I never would.

Some things haven't changed. Mr Namasi is still my rock and safe place. My Mom is still my Mom. I don't get to see her very often these days, living as we do on two different continents, so I might be a bit quiet while she's here. Gotta make the most of having her here and all that.

Take care of yourselves in the meantime. There's a lot of ugliness about at the moment. Let's rebel against it. 

Amidst the mayhem

An upside of working with my hands is that it leaves my mind free to do a lot of thinking. The downside? Yup. My mind is free to do a lot of thinking.

Right now, it seems that there is violence and injustice everywhere. In no particular order:

Russian soccer/football (pick your preferred term) laying into English football fans. Violence and mayhem ensuing on the streets in France.

A man enters a night club where young people are having a good time and opens fire. One man was able to shoot approximately 100 people, killing roughly half that number (reports vary).

Brock Turner gets a ludicrously light sentence for raping a woman, and then he and his father have the temerity to talk about how his life has been ruined.

Oscar Pistorius is in court for the murder of his girlfriend. His psychologist tells the court that his client is too mentally ill to deal with prison.

A Dutch woman who reported that she had been raped in Qatar has been detained and sentenced for extramarital sex.

And in the middle of this vortex of horror and injustice, we took a body blow as a family (more of that another time).

Work in progress

So, while my hands are busy painting a mural, my mind is churning. Thoughts are swirling and finding no place to roost.

For some reason, I keep being reminded of Herman Charles Bosman - a highly skilled and very popular South African author. He mainly wrote short stories, but in Cold Stone Jug (which you can read online here, if the mood strikes you), he writes of his own time in prison for killing his brother in law. One of the things he remarked upon was that all the other prisoners were absolutely adamant that they were innocent. It seemed that Bosman was the only guilty man in the place. When Bosman acknowledged that he had, in fact, committed the crime for which he was incarcerated, a fellow inmate declared - with no hint of irony - that it was unfair on him to be locked up with someone who really had committed a crime. There should be one prison for us innocent ones, and another one for you guilty people, he said (or words to that effect). The relevant section of the story can be found in chapter 5 (language alert: as a product of its time, this book contains terms that are considered highly offensive today).

I'm pretty sure you've been as inundated as I have with all the horror stories. And there's so little we can do. I am only one person. You're only one person.

But hang on.

So is Brock Turner. So is Oscar Pistorius. So was Omar Mateen. So was Attila the Hun. So was Josef Stalin. So was Adolf Hitler. So was Mother Theresa. So was Nelson Mandela. So was Martin Luther King Jr.

So this is me, hitching up my big girl panties with renewed determination. I'm going to be kind to people. I'm going to spread the love. I can't change what is going on in the big wide world. But I can have an impact on the lives of the people with whom I come into contact. I can also say things like 'that's not right' when I see something that's not right. I can be like those two lads on bicycles who intervened when they saw Brock Turner having his way with an unconscious woman.

Normal service will be resumed, but I just wanted to share this with you. It seemed to big to just flit over it like it never happened and talk about my latest upcycling project.

Scars and the tales they tell

I recently acquired three Ercol red dot children's chairs. They had been bought new by a family with two sons (no-one is quite sure why three chairs for two boys) who are now men with families of their own.

Both parents have subsequently died and the sons are busy disposing of their parents' belongings. The chairs formed an integral part of their childhood memories, and the plan was the sand them down, restore them and use them in their own homes. But their own children have outgrown kiddy chairs, and with full time jobs, homes to run, families to raise and lives to lead, finding the time was proving too difficult. So they decided to sell the chairs to someone who would take the time to restore them.

That someone proved to be me.

The chairs show clear signs of having survived the childhoods of two rambunctious boys and their various friends. Presumably the grandchildren used them, too, when they went to visit. There are scratches in the wood, some of which probably deserve the word 'gouges'; the points of the various bits are chipped; they are long overdue for an oiling. Everything you would expect from a piece of furniture half a century (or so) old.

So there I stood, sandpaper in hand, with a decision to make: before I apply lashings of nourishing and preserving oil, do I sand the beautiful elm wood right down until it is blemish free and perfect...and ever so slightly differently shaped from the original? Or do I sand away the worst of the damage, to leave some of the history while removing the risk of splinters for the next little person to sit in the chairs?

I went with column B. The chairs have had their own story. I hope their stories will continue for several decades yet. I don't know how each of the scratches and chips was caused, but I do know that each one has been part of the journey. If you want a blemish-free piece of furniture, you buy a new one. If you want a piece of history, you want it have evidence of said history.

Or so I think, anyway.

It put me in mind of an incident that happened when my niece was a little girl. She was in my Mom's bedroom as my Mom was getting dressed and she asked with a gasp of pure admiration, "Granny, how did you get those pretty finsil (silver) lines on your bum?" Said niece is now a gown woman in her thirties. She almost certainly has 'pretty finsil lines' of her own, and no doubt she hates them as much as my mother hated hers back then. We're raised with the idea that we're to go through life's storms without collecting evidence of the battles we've won (or at least survived). Those stretch marks which bear evidence to the fact that we carried the next generation within ourselves for a time. Those wrinkles that declare that we have been around since before the current norm was the norm...and we're still standing.

More recently: my son was features on the front page of an ice hockey match programme for this weekend. I WhatsApped a copy to my family abroad. Both my mother and my sister - who haven't seen my son in years (such is the reality of living on different continents) remarked on the scar in the middle of my son's forehead. They remember that scar. They remember how he got it: flying at mach 1 into a doorpost. They have seen it featured in every single photograph of my son for the past 20 years and change since he acquired it. It's part of him. It's part of his story. They know how it epitomises the no-holds-barred approach my son still has to life - that he lives at full tilt, with no sense of self-preservation, and saves nothing for the swim back (if you can name the movie from which that reference is drawn, you get extra brownie points).

Vintage is in. You only need to look at an events calendar, or a TV schedule to see how sought after it is. We want things with a past, a history. We want things that look as if they have a tale to tell. Perhaps it's time to adopt the same attitude towards ourselves?

Anyhoo, before I wax too philosophical, let me end this particular anecdote with before and after pictures. The chairs have been uploaded to my Folksy shop.

Before

Sanded and oiled

The statute of limitations on new ventures

There seems to be a bit of a preconceived notion about when it is the proper time to do certain things in life: You attend school from this age to that age. You get married before X age. You started your family before Y age. You learn new hobbies or start new sports by such and such a stage of life. You stop wearing your hair long and your skirts short by this point...

But why?

Okay, I can understand the instinctive drive to procreate before a woman reaches menopause. I get that one. It's primal. Not so sure about the others, though.

Eve Fletcher

I recently saw an episode of Homes Under the Hammer where the developer who bought and transformed the property was a retiree in his 80s. There are countless stories of people in their 70s, 80s and 90s going back to university...and some even to primary school. A few days ago, a friend of mine ran her first 89km (55 mile) Comrades Marathon in the year she turns 50. There are viral videos of dancers in their 80s and 90s (example). And Bette Burke-Nash is still working as a flight attendant at 80. And Eve Fletcher was still surfing in her 80s.

So here I am, in my 50s, embarking on a new chapter in my life, and honing my skills with power tools. In 10 years' time, maybe my arthritis will have become so bad that I won't be able to do the things I can do now. So I'd best get on with it, hadn't I?

Some years ago, my mother in law and I went shopping for a pair of shoes for her to wear to a major family function. One of the several reasons for the shindig was her 75th birthday. She shied away from a lovely pair because they were rather expensive and needlessly good quality. After all, she was only going to be around for another five years or so - why go to the expense of shoes built to last any longer than that? Well, I'm here to tell you that she has outlasted those shoes. She turned 90 earlier this year. Her faithful feet more than deserved the good shoes.

I once read a meme that said "I wish I were as fat now as I was when I first thought I was fat." You might want to read that one again. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Got it?

Do you know that I spent the six years from age 16 to age 22 stuck indoors when the family went to the beach because I was 'too fat' (at a UK size 10/US size 6)? All that wasted time, for a girl who lists among her favourite sights, sounds and smells all manner of beach-related things. What an eejit!

Now I know that too fat and too old aren't quite the same thing. But they're not a million miles apart. They're both matters of perception.

Let's look at it this way: right now you think you're too old to do X thing. In ten years time you'll think, "Dammit I'm too old to do that thing now. I wish I'd started ten years ago."

So the hell with the statute of limitations. Give it a whirl. You'll never be this young again. Go. Sign up for that salsa class. Go skydiving. Learn a new language. Teach yourself to play the guitar. Have a go at being a full time artist/poet/upcycler.

Let's grow old disgracefully!