I’M sure that we all concur with Jerome K. Jerome’s assessment of work: it fascinates us and we could watch it for hours. However, there can be more to gain from watching the labourer than mere self-satisfaction; sometimes, we can be amazed.
Back in the 1970s, on the disreputable scrap of beach next to the entrance to Portsmouth Dockyard, I watched a fisherman repair the gunwale on his small boat. It involved a bonfire, one dry and one very wet rag, some prepared timber and a drainpipe. He would slide one of the pieces of timber into the pipe, insert the rags at either end and prop the ensemble (wet rag down) in the bonfire. Steam would appear from the top and, after 20 minutes of occasional re-wetting of the rag and a certain amount of necessary fiddling about, he slid out the length of timber.
It was immediately obvious that, contrary to the normal nature of wood, it was rather flexible and it was effortlessly bent into position on the gunwale and fixed with cramps.
This, and similarly casual methods of steambending, have been practised for centuries in the making of such things as oak barrels (in which a ‘bonfire’ is made inside the half-made and wetted barrel) and walkingstick crooks (which are buried in hot, wet sand).
Denne historien er fra September 18, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 18, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
