My credibility as an expert in the job I do, which I can’t reveal because the Anal Business Police are probably watching, is slowly ebbing away as my fondness and vim for what I previously enjoyed doing is slowly dripping down the drain like really runny matter. Christ its hard to get motivated any more, and being an employee rather than the king of the world means that everything I do for my company earns bragging rights for them. Last year I worked really hard and got a shit bonus, enough to pay for a return ticket to Turkey probably with airport spending money, not including the £25 to try and win a supercar, which thinking about it wouldn’t be much use because I don’t like cars and don’t really like going fast especially when I’m really close to the road. Which I would be in a supercar.

With this in mind I have decided to make things, I am to become a carpenter who specialises in planing, cabinet scraping and wire wool treatments. I have no interest in cutting wood into shapes and fitting things together, Dovetail joints are for squares; I aim to just carpen, without the ter, the idea being I make old planks look fancy plank pants. Linseed and Danish are the oils I anoint the wood with, and a paint brush is my partner in crime. I recently made a table for my folks, because I sat on their old out door table and apparently because i’m overweight (not clinically obese, i’ve checked) according to my daughter, the 2 inch thick marble ex-fire hearth cracked in two. I’m ok you don’t have to worry but I am exploring the possibility of taking my two octogenarian parents to court to sue for Domages, take them for everything they’ve got. They loved the Oak table, live edged and oiled to within an inch of its life, slightly too shiny for me, but it will fade in time, and old people love shiny things like magpies, their house is full of highly polished stuff. I shall call my self The Ministry Of Shrawley Tables

My point being that if I can make shiny coffee tables and sell to the old and vulnerable I could make a mint, or at least a little more than I make by working my butt off for the company who employs me, which has to remain secret because the hills have eyes and hills are my business. The flaw in my plan is that the older folk like my folks don’t use the internet and so I’ve now decided to target the hipster, looking for something authentic to look good in their loft apartment, and thinking about it, i’d much rather lie on the ebay description and sell to those with money to burn.

So on Saturday when I spent hours outside in my garden scraping away at this massive piece of Holly from Hartlebury Castle, with an empty house and a bastard behind the eyes due to the pokey IPA I drunk the night before I ruined my thumbs and the palms of my hands and all of a sudden felt peculiar and started to sway irregularly. Carpentry is seriously injurious to health, take it from the new Jesus, I’ve been around a bit and therefore qualify, better me than some pre pubescent pipsqueak anyway.