Craft Works

Craft Works ©

By Michael Casey

Well the school year is almost over, so the school reports have arrived, the girls’ school posts them out, so there is no fear of them being “lost” not that the girls would need to lose them. As its also end of school year any craft objects come home to decorate our house.

My small daughter has produced a wind chime so I have to find a place to hang it, as it’s quite heavy it cannot be attached to the light pull in my room or in the bathroom. So it’s relegated to the metal post that holds up one end of our washing line. The pigeons will be the art and craft critics, awarding one, two or several white marks to the device. Though the local cats might attack the pigeons first, before any artistic grading or scoring can be given.

They use laser guided design tools or some such thing at school. When I was at school 40 years ago we had a ruler and a pencil, and maybe a fretsaw. So what the girls use is very high tech. One of my brothers was a bit of a carpenter at school, perhaps he should have been christened Joseph.

As for me I was total rubbish. You make a 12 inch pencil case in 1^st year, they call it Year 7 now, just to confuse parents like me. My pencil case ended up as an 8 inch one, why? Because I got the ½ joints wrong and had to trim my wood, twice in fact. So my pencil case shrunk. Mr Ely was both the woodwork teacher and PE teacher, he was very tall. I remember that fact for once on the rugby field I was able to throw him out my way, I was as strong as a man when I was 12.

My woodwork skills were just rubbish, but I tried my best, and made a football rattle out of wood. It’s upstairs in the rubbish room underneath all the junk. Nowadays it would be classed as an offensive weapon and the Police would never allow it into a football stadium.

We also did metalwork at school, and having a Blacksmith father did not help, I was rubbish at that too. We made ornaments of plastic with 3 pieces of twisted metal planted inside like trees. Only mine got warped and arthritic, I was not proud of my efforts at craft. I remember I took it home and installed it on top of the air raid shelter, it stayed there until it rusted, then we just binned it.

So the final craft subject was Art, I think the teacher was called Mr Boulton, same name as the kid in front of me in class. No we didn’t tease him about being the son of the Art teacher. And yes I cannot draw or paint or anything. We were going to carve a piece from chalk, so I drew an outline of Coffee our dog on a square of chalk we had created from powder and the we were supposed to carve it. Needless to say, if I was making instant coffee I would have had more success and at least I’d enjoy the drink.

All I can remember is taking a lump of chalk home, which we gave to my  little sister to draw with on our back yard. Mr Boulton also had a few mens magazines for the A level students to look at, we stumbled over them and were told to leave them alone, despite this I never wanted to do A level Art. I did one year and that was it.

So with this lack of ability what of the next generation? Both my daughters are great artists, drawing like professionals. My brother could draw too, he used to do cartoons by drawing on the edges of books, so you flick the book and the cartoons come to life. My wife can do calligraphy, in Chinese characters, so the Shanghai side has saved them. That and the fact that we were strict parents, no video games nor such toys when they were small, all we gave them was crayons, hundreds and hundreds of crayons and pencils. Ten years of that makes for good draughtsmanship.

So now I have to shave and so forth, SSS as it’s called if you can work out that crossword clue. Then I’m off to Aldi for my daily shop and my daily walk, if my priest is right I’m now halfway through my recovery period, post quadruple bypass, it was supposed to be a triple but six months later I discovered I had four grafts. Ah well, at least I’m still here amusing you all, and that I suppose is my only craft, I am a writer, I cannot do anything else, though I hope I’m a good dad.