Shedlife

More on Murdoch: Blame the father... or the tree house...

2011-07-21T08:59:00.001+01:00

In a Sunday Tlelegraph article, Michael Leapman profiled Rupert Murdoch and his upbringing by a stern father.

"Some 30 years ago I was strolling with Dame Elisabeth Murdoch in the garden of Cruden, the old farmhouse near Melbourne where Rupert spent his childhood. Over lunch, she had given me useful material for my biography of her only son, the burgeoning media mogul who had recently bought The Times and The Sunday Times. We passed beneath a tree. "That," she said, pointing towards the branches, "was where Rupert had his sleepover."

She explained that his father, Sir Keith, himself a successful newspaper executive and a stern disciplinarian, had been worried that Rupert did not possess the required steel to follow in his footsteps. To toughen him up, Sir Keith insisted that, during the school holidays, he should, whatever the weather, be banished to the unheated tree house. This regime was imposed for eight years, until he turned 16."

We made this - shedworking to beat the recession

2011-07-09T16:12:00.000+01:00

At Artsmart in London, Shedman was interested to see Etsy promoting their online community of makers and sellers. One of their giveaways was the tea towel pictured above featuring a tree of sheds - an interesting image, suggesting growth, networking and the unique role of the shed for artists and craftspeople. At the bottom, the strapline: 'Stay handmade'.

Etsy describes itself as a global community 'with buyers and sellers coming from more than 150 countries. Etsy sellers number in the hundreds of thousands. Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice: Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.'

Their approach seems to be paying off. In May 2011, Etsy sold 2,006,810 items worth $40.0 million - a 75% increase on May 2010.

Shedman can't remember who said something like 'All a business needs is to make it and sell it', or that many successful businesses started off as a partnership between someone who could make the product and someone who could sell it. Etsy - and other sites like it - offer a way for makers to access their market globally through the partnership of an online salesperson.

Global distibution of Etsies if they were all glowworm

There's the thorny issue of quality here. One person's crafted birdhouse is another's lump of shed junk. But there's a democracy of demand here, and a refreshing lack of elitism. Many makers may have honed their talents and skills in the academy but the academy remains the training ground not the arbiter.

The number of Etsies who work in a shed must run into thousands, so in their honour Shedman has added an Etsy shed search to the sidebar.

Sunburnt in the shed

2011-07-07T11:24:00.001+01:00

Magnifying glasses and sunshine take Shedman back to cubs, primary school and burning holes in his sandals, hands and anything combustible. (The school was rebuilt.)

On sunny days over the last forty years or so, Roger Ackling has spent a lot of time in the shed, or just outside it, turning schoolboy fun into an artform. 'Down to Earth' is an exhibition of his sunburnt garden objects including forks, rakes, trowels and seed boxes at the Chelsea Space until July 30.

For our younger readers, please don't try this at home.

The Top 50 shed sequences: from 'The Castle' by Franz Kafka

2010-12-21T22:01:00.000Z

'When K. had taken out the bucket of dirty water, fetched fresh water, and now began sweeping the schoolroom, a boy of about twelve rose from one bench, touched K.’s hand, and in all the noise said something he couldn’t make out at all. Then the racket suddenly stopped. K. turned. Here was what he had feared all morning. The teacher, small man that he was, stood in the doorway holding an assistant by the collar with each hand. He had probably caught them fetching firewood, for he thundered in a mighty voice, pausing after every word: ‘Who has dared to break into the woodshed? Where is the fellow? Let me crush him as he deserves!’ Here Frieda rose from the floor, which she was trying to wash around Miss Gisa’s feet, looked at K. as if to draw strength from the sight, and said, with something of her old dignity in her voice and bearing: ‘I did, sir. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. If the classrooms were to be heated at all this morning, we had to open the shed, and I dared not come to you for the key at night. My fiancé had gone to the Castle Inn, it was possible that he might spend the night there, so I had to make the decision for myself. If I did wrong you must forgive my inexperience. I was scolded hard enough by my fiancé when he saw what had happened. In fact he even forbade me to heat the rooms early, because he thought your locking the woodshed showed that you didn’t want them heated until you had arrived yourself. So the fact that they aren’t heated is his fault, but breaking into the woodshed is mine.’ ‘Who broke down the door?’ the teacher asked the assistants, who were still trying to shake off his grip, but in vain. ‘That gentleman,’ they both said, and pointed to K., thus leaving the matter in no doubt. Frieda laughed, and this laughter seemed even more convincing than her words.'

Kafka, F., 2009. The Castle. Oxford University Press. (Page 116-117)
Translated by Anthea Bell

The Top 50 shed sequences: from 'Austerlitz' by W. G. Sebald

2010-03-03T00:37:00.000Z

'Someone, he added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings, listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less than normal size – the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, the lock-keeper’s lodge, the pavilion for viewing the landscape, the children’s bothy in the garden – are those that offer us at least a semblance of peace, whereas no one in his right mind could truthfully say that he liked a vast edifice such as the Palace of Justice on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels. At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.'
[P23/24 Penguin 2001]

Austerlitz also contains the telling remark that shows the other side of Shedman's dictum Open the magic door:

'No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open. [P33]

Nominate your top 50 sheds in fiction, film and drama

2010-02-21T18:46:00.002Z

Which are your favourite sequences featuring a shed - in a novel (graphic or otherwise), short story, movie or TV drama, stage play or musical? Is it the Potting Shed in Graham Greene's play of the same name, or the gamekeeper's hut in Harry Potter - or Lady Chatterley? Enid Blyton's S.S. shed or Sarah Dunant's pig shed in Fat Lands? Eraserhead or Swimming Pool? The Dambusters or Kes? Provide the full title, context and exact reference if possible. Make your suggestions now. Prizes for the ten best entries. (The Shed movie and the world's worst novel The Shack are not eligible for nomination.)

The Guardian commissions new Shedman poem

2009-04-25T12:42:00.005+01:00

There's a specially commissioned new poem by Shedman in the Work section of The Guardian today (Saturday April 25th) in honour of all you Shedworkers.

A Doddle

Alan’s in his shed, working away,
away from the children and the washing machine.
His aim, to start a business making Allan keys,
then move to a new factory in Milton Keynes.

Two doors down, in this gentrified terrace
of temporary structures some call shed,
Terence (Terry to his mates) Ferris
dreads the working days, the lonely hours,

spent, like Shami, in the caravan next door,
head inside a screen connected to a world
that’s rarely seen. The benefits of broadband
like Guantanamo without the waterboarding.

Jill, across the road, takes a different tack.
Her online business, run from a log cabin
the size of Slough, hawks holidays in
Moroccan riads and visits every one.

Terence, like his Latin namesake,
watches the newts gambol and
the lark of tits through the window
of the converted garage he did himself

and thinks, ‘You're a wise person
if you can easily direct your attention
to whatever needs it.’ He’s halfway through
the architectural drawing for his client

when the kids get home. Shedworkers rise
as one and insert pittas in the toaster,
praise their children, search for Marmite
in the wrong drawer, then return to work.

©Copyright Shedman 2009 All rights reserved.

If you would like to commission Shedman to write a poem for you or you would like to invite him to take part in your festival or event , get in touch with shedman at shedman.net. Serious shedworkers are also advised to check out Shedworking.

Shedman sorts out his online sheds!

2009-02-01T18:42:00.008Z

After six months' blogging, Shedman feels he's getting the hang of it - after help from Alex at Shedworking and attending the fascinating Digital Horizons 2012 course at Ravensbourne College. But like all good sheddies, he's decided to move things round a bit.

So he's moved and refreshed quite a few of the stories and is sorting out the side panels.

Now, in Shedworld, Shedman explores the wonderful world of sheds.

And here in Shedlife you can tell Shedman what you do in your shed.

The basic idea is that Shedman goes into Shedworld and discovers Shedlife!

Audi Maserati

2008-12-09T20:15:00.001Z

Audi (aka Dennis Robinson) sent Shedman this lovely piece after meeting him at a reading. They met up again at Havant Literary Festival. He's a genius singer/songwriter, performer and poet.

I enjoyed your poetry in Havant. .......here's a little poem that had I written it before yesterday I would have leapt up and given it to you then

This is the first draft and may change.. this is a present for you to do with as you wish. Thanks again

I got a shed ! I got a shed !
it's imaginary, it's in my head.
the walls are made of shadows
the roof, the wingtip of a small white bird
the floor is undiscovered

and in my shed absurd
in dusty jars on sloping shelves
I keep the fragments of a dream
and various explanations
as to what I think it means

I keep the whirling blades of sarcasm
in a bag hung on a nail.
I keep the bag shut tight.

In my shed absurd
there is no day or night.
Just the beating of tiny wings
as little words take flight
and drift into the shadows
to escape my dreaming head.
as my body chants the mantra
I got a shed ! I got a shed !

Cheers
audi maserati aka den

The shed, the tobacco and the wife

2008-12-05T00:07:00.001Z

Michael O'Connor from the Wells and Spas Mailing List:

'The best shed I remember belonged to a very old
Gentleman in Pewfall about 50 years ago. He called it
his Bolt Hole, he made directly for it, whenever his
wife and he had too many women visitors. I was
privileged on occasions to be given guided tours of
whatever he was pottering with at the time. One of
which was his "Burglar A-llarum" which consisted of
trip wires connected to an alarm clock mechanism. When
I asked if he had caught any burglars he replied "only
the wife about every 3 weeks".
In those days, in addition to the old age pension,
pensioners received about half an ounce of tobacco a
week or fortnight. The old Gentleman was in the habit
of retiring to his shed with his pipe for an afternoon
nap in an armchair. After a small fire one day, he
received an ultimatum from his wife. "One of three
things will have to go, the shed, the tobacco or me".
The shed and his wife stayed.'

Ken Smith's Shed

2008-12-04T23:29:00.001Z

Not long before he died, poet Ken Smith kindly agreed to launch his collected poems 'Shed' in Brighton as part of Shedman's ShedNight at the Booth Museum of Natural History in Brighton. It was the culmination of the writer's residency at the museum where Shedman was born.

Here's an email from Ken received just before the event:

'did you see today's Guardian (p 7) has a report of a burglar sentenced in Exeter to a month's remand on condition he sleep in the shed? Ken Smith'

The Jet Powered Beer Cooler

2008-12-04T01:44:00.002Z

"In New Zealand there are two things that are the essence of being a 'good Kiwi bloke'. These are of course playing rugby and having a shed."

"THE JET POWERED BEER COOLER"

After an interesting discussion about sheds with my university tutor (Dan Blott) he passed me your address. I thought you might be interested in this, http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/ It was passed to me by my antipodean cousin, apparently other great kiwi shed inventions include the jet boat.

merry xmas

Stuart Large

(Dan Blott was one of the visitors to Shedman's first 'shed  session' at the Booth Museum who just happens to be an expert on sheds and Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth School of Architecture... "I had two  kids with me. The girl - Katy - chose the dogs name and you gave her a  present. We talked a lot about the architecture of the shed and the  encroachment of essentially shed-like structures into just about every  building type imaginable..." )

Enoch & Eli Shed Story from storyteller Jamie Crawford

2008-12-04T01:32:00.001Z

Photo: Jane Bown

Dear John

briefly as v busy: a somewhat hasty synopsis of an 'enoch and eli' story from the black country...

enoch has an outside loo ('the shed') at bottom of garden. son playing football kicks ball against shed and knocks it into canal. enoch emerges dripping and catches son. asks if guilty, son denies. then tells story of george washingtion's son who owned up to cutting down gw's favourite cherry tree but went unpunished due to honesty. son owns up. enoch belts him. why? because gw wasn't sitting in tree when chopped down.

Jamie Crawford

Thanks Jamie!

Fred-in-the-shed! A connoisseur of fine tools and equipment

2008-12-04T01:26:00.001Z

Shedman

Well done for your shed activities.
I am Oxford based but come to Brighton regularly.
I have a website, www.fredshed.com.
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help,
regards, Fred-in-the-shed.

Thanks Fred!

At the back of the shed...

2008-12-04T01:14:00.001Z

Shedman has been sent all kinds of submissions over the last few years and as he clears out his virtual shed, he's posting them here for safe keeping.

Here's the first - Shed Bed:

Dear Shedman

Here is a poem I wrote about a shed I lived in when I was in Melbourne,
Australia:

S H E D BED

I once slept in a shed
A shed Bed
It was warm for two,
inside the warehouse of cool.
Listening to the sounds;
Echoing, lovemaking, groaning.

We can hear you! We yell,
Shut Up! They shout!
'Thank your lucky stars you've got a shed for a bed,
to keep you warm through Winter's rain'.

No virgins to protect you now,
No angels of the bed...
They've all gone, they've fled.
I anoint thee now a travelling shed.
And we escaped well fed!

by Tamsin Williams

Hanne Landin: Shed pictures

2008-12-03T22:22:00.001Z

Hanne Landin got in touch with Shedman over the summer to send some of her shed pictures. 'If anyone wants to buy one please give them my email address,' says Hanne. 'As for why I like them, I think it is because they are so human in scale and you can imagine how simple life would be if we lived in one! And then there is the 3 Little Pigs connection, their wooden house was so much better than the one built of straw!' (hannalandin at blueyonder.co.uk)

What do you do in your shed? Nuclear power generation...

2008-11-09T17:26:00.001Z

Shedman has always been fascinated by that image from the black and white footage of atom bomb tests where a shed is blown away in the blast, so he felt a certain irony when he read the following:

From The Observer Sunday November 9th
'Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground'

Find out more here: The future of things

And here: Hyperion Power Generation

And while you're at it take a look at this too: The future of things - random sheds

Normal service resumes for September

2008-09-01T00:44:00.001+01:00

After an excellent holiday in California, Shedman is back in the UK.

Latest news is that Shedman was interviewed by Mark Lawson for the UK BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row. They'll be running a special feature on creative sheds sometime week commencing 1st September.

What daughters do for dads...

2008-07-22T08:25:00.001+01:00

Andrew Hollins - or rather his daughter Bethany (My dad has the best shed ever so I hope he sends you a picture!) - contacted Shedman about his collection of original paintings by Australian artist Pete Browne. Shedman asked Andrew if he had a shed and here's his response:

'daughters!
they do set you up!
i do have a shed, but alas no pictures
and just like my life it is narrow, chaotic, cluttered but every now and again things of worth, beauty and even genius emerge!
used for running repairs to the house, garden and equipment
the most recent article to be finished was a house number for my mum - attached
as for the genius bit - still in development!

the originals of the pictures i sent by peter browne
double in price every 3 years! add to your shed collection and your income in one easy move!'

(Love that 17, says Shedman...)

By the way, Bethany works for the Royal Horticultural Society who happen to have a Flower Show this weekend at Tatton Park near Knutsford, Cheshire .

Note about Pete Browne:
'Peter Browne was born in 1947 in West Wyalong NSW.
Peter Browne claims to have been found under a sheet of tin in West Wyalong around 1947. Raconteur and scallywag, Peter moved into a ruin at Silverton and established it’s first art gallery, where he held court for travellers entertaining them in his almost roofless “renovated “ ruin for many years.' More about Pete at Outback Artist.

Shedworld - the adventures of Shedman

2008-07-19T01:39:00.003+01:00

The Big Day Out Parker's Piece Cambridge July 2007

Shedworld, Shedman's personal blog, is now live at www.shedworld.net. It features the random jottings of Shedman on the road, travelling far and wide through shedland. Occasional notes about plans, people, projects - and sheds.

Shedworld provides a refreshing personal view of sheds, poetry, and life in general based around Shedman's present and previous projects. As time allows, Shedman will be updating the Shedlife site with projects old and new. If you've met Shedman at projects in the past he'd love to hear from you. - and do send in any reminiscences or pictures if you have them.

Cuisle Poetry Festival

Limerick City Ireland October 2005

Gordon Brown's Second Home?

2008-07-19T01:07:00.001+01:00

'Hello Shedman, we enjoyed meeting you recently at Ledbury. I was passing Westminster Palace recently and noticed a floating shed...

All the best

Paul Kennedy
Herefordshire'

Creepie-Crawlie Shed Quest

2008-07-17T20:33:00.001+01:00

Wherever Shedman runs a project he likes to go on a Shed Quest to find the best sheds in the zone. Mark Cockram is a bookbinder/book artist who's on a shed quest of his own. He's been invited to exhibit in the South Bank Centre in 2009. The exhibition is called the Pestival and is about the world as perceived through the eyes of insects. He wants to create a Garden Shed Gallery.

Mark needs to find an old dilapidated shed that has lots of evidence of insects living in it. Can anyone out there help at all? If you can, send a message via Kontactr with a picture if possible - and while you're at it, tell Shedman what you do in your shed!

Mark's teaching in India and takes his tea breaks in a shed.

'The shed gallery will be one part of a much larger exhibition,' Mark writes. 'For the shed to have impact it would have to be of a reasonable size. I think that the older the better. The contents would be important as I would not want it to look like a disney film set.'

First to feature - Andy

2008-07-03T18:01:00.001+01:00

Good to start with some really traditional shed activity.
Nothing like a bit of swarf!

'Use a lathe and other machinery to make models, tools and items for friends and family
Repair household items
Just outside the shed I melt aluminium in a flowerpot
It's also somewhere to keep the lawnmower and gardening tools' says Andy.
He runs a blog at http://workshopshed.blogspot.com/

Andy wins a signed copy of Shedman to mark the first post on Shedworld.

What do you do in your shed?

2008-07-03T15:21:00.010+01:00

What do you do in your shed? You can post your answers to this searching question here at Shedlife, which has launched just in time for National Shed Week, that great institution of the British summer orchestrated by Alex Johnson at Shedworking and Uncle Wilco at Readersheds.

Shedlife launches for UK Shed Week

2008-07-01T21:51:00.002+01:00

Shedlife, the new blog devoted to answering the question 'What do you do in your shed?' is being launched to coincide with National Shed Week 2008 and Shedman's visit to the Ledbury Poetry Festival (from July 4th - 163 years to the day since Henry David Thoreau took to his cabin in the woods at Walden Pond).

Shedman has been travelling the world for over five years now on a unique journey of discovery, a kind of spiritual quest with roof felt. It's been a costly, beautiful, wry and amazing all at the same time, often with splinters. But the one thing he's learned is just how creative people are, how inventive and how generous in sharing what they do in their sheds. Shedman feels it's time he shared his experiences and ask everyone who does things in sheds to share theirs. He's looking for great writing, superb images and extraordinary feats. You can send an email via the contact form or add a comment to a post. At the same time you can find out more about Shedman's own adventures at Shedman's blog and the Shedman website.

Shedman at Walden

2008-06-29T11:55:00.001+01:00

Shedman at Walden Pond

Shedman recently paid homage to Henry David Thoreau on a brief trip to Walden Pond and the site where Thoreau built a cabin in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts.

Welcome to Shedlife

2008-06-28T14:51:00.003+01:00

Shedlife has been set up by that superhero with knotholes Shedman. What do you do in your shed?