Wednesday 28 June 2017

making things safe






It's been a month since I wrote anything here, partly due to the fact I could not think of what to say and partly as I have been away to celebrate my 50th birthday in Sardinia.  Before I left I continued to repair equipment.  I triangulated the Arial runway and re-decked the worst of the rot on the castle.  I also applied for some money to buy materials to build a pirate ship.  Money is on everyones minds at the moment we have a shortfall and a couple of unsuccessful applications.  There has also been trouble down the road.  Iron bars and guns and rumors and truths and turf wars and class wars and race wars - everyone is feeling unsettled.

I had a certain clarity of thought when I began this blog and I've realised that clarity is not always a good thing, I spend most of my time in a muddle jumping from pillar to post.  The good thing about working on equipment at the adventure playground is that it ties into a simpler time for me and it really is something I am able to do.  Not that the skills required are that specialised but there is a certain finess that comes from experience.  The over engineering, the bolting through and the aches and pains from drilling and sawing at difficult angles up ladders and behind your head.  People rarely recognise the importance of triangulation, the power of the wind and the way that young people read challenge - what they are capable of.  I'm no expert but the great thing about doing something so specific is there are very few experts and with my strong hands, risk adverse disposition and tendency to over engineer I am supremely suited to this type of work.  I have enjoyed getting dirty, the small splinters and cuts, the realisation that the hard skin on my hands, grown through years of building, making and working had gone a little soft.  There is something familiar about returning to something you know, it makes you feel at home in yourself.  Laying in a hot bath, drinking a glass of beer and soaking out the stiffness in the muscles is something I had missed.

This relationship to making and value is something that runs very deep in my history, the solving of the immediate problem of making something safe seems like the best way to approach any type of work, practical pragmatic and worthwhile, this is my sense making I will find more things that make sense.