Creative Works

Woodworking

Ferret Enclosure; A frameless Modular Shed Construction Project

This project creates a 6-sided enclosure providing 8 cubic meters of internal space using a set of modular panels that are easy to assemble and disassemble for flat-pack transport and which can be readily extended to create larger constructs if so desired.

image showing the finished enclosure in the garden

image showing the finished enclosure in the garden

We needed an outdoor enclosure for 2 very energetic youthful ferrets, as the warm weather was upon us and we could no longer stand the sight of their plaintive faces pressed up against the living room window enviously espying the cats running amok in the vegetable patch. I would obviously love to give them free range, but this world doesn't really care for little lives as it ought and since ferrets can be only semi-domesticated they'd be missing and then dead within a week of free range living for sure. Plus our neighbours have chickens whom I don't think should be introduced to ferrets. So we needed a compound for them.

Ferrets though are both diggers and climbers, so it...[Read On]

image illustrating Ferret Enclosure; A frameless Modular Shed Construction Project

Poetry

New Language

Self-Isolating.
The New Normal.
Stay Safe.
Stay Well.
Stay Home.
Save Lives.
So much camel case.
Short of breath?

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Crystal Grotto Profile Detail

I took this photograph specifically to play with 'fault-lines' as readilly apparent in the structure of the (presumably) quartz construction material. Cutting perpendicularly through those natural (horizontal) fault-lines the sculpture fractures the light pasing through it to deliver a bold light versus dark contrast. In the result I see a suggestion of two faces - one skull-like, the other quite baby-ish; albeit somewhat of a grotesque.

Stories

Uncle Fester's Fidgety Fingers

Uncle Fester spent his days sitting at the beaten up drop leave table in the corner of our kitchen constantly a tip tap tapping his fingers in a rhythm alien to the sensibilities of those around him. At first it had been menacing. Then maudlin. And finally maddening. The pastor who lived at number six stopped stopping by for his harvest festival donation demands and his inglorious attempts to save Ma's soul (ever since dad had walked over those furnace hot plates and burned his feet right off the pastor had taken an increased interest in Ma's soul). None of us missed the pastor very much, least of all Ma's ample soul. Less happily the constant drumming had driven Mitch, Lizzie's handsome young suitor, to self harming such that his face and arms looked somewhat akin to a bloodied scarecrow. The house was often filled with the horrified shrieks of the young 'uns, should they chance upon him blundering out of the lavvy or...[Read On]