Opinion: Who needs musical talent? I’m a workshop alchemist
© Tim Scrivener The cattle are in, the fields are relentlessly deluged and there is only so much fun to be had from sitting on a tractor cutting roadside hedges and annoying cyclists.
It’s time to retreat to the workshop, fix all the accumulated breakages of the year, and possibly make something new.
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About the author
My family are all irritatingly artistic – dog portraits adorn the office walls, assorted musical instruments fill the house with melodies, and I’m beyond useless at all that sort of stuff.
I once had a few piano lessons, but got sacked for playing the thing like I was trying to have a fight with it.
Magic superpower
However, I do possess one magic superpower that transcends all this frippery – I can weld bits of metal together. Who cares about Beethoven? I can do alchemy.
In the early days, as a struggling council farm tenant, I used to ask for grease guns and linchpins as birthday presents. An ancient oil-cooled welder was among my most treasured possessions.
Fast forward a few years, and an oxyacetylene set, a plasma cutter and a MIG welder can turn even the humblest farm workshop into the lair of a superhero.
Add in a couple of Milwaukee impact guns and a decent vice, and almost anything can be got going again, which is handy on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of harvest.
Not only can making things be quite fun, there are serious opportunities to save money.
Looking for a tonne front weight for a tractor, I was mildly perturbed to discover that a lump of concrete with a three-point hitch attached cost more than a grand.
Getting a bit of plate steel, cutting out some panels and sticking them all together produced the same result for £300.
Not only that, but I can add or remove concrete blocks as required, and there’s even room for a few groceries, should I pass the village shop.
I have mentioned the joys (and financial possibilities) of educational visits under Countryside Stewardship before.
People-carrier trailer
However, with a lot of walking and no way of getting near the cows and calves, I quickly worked out that I needed a people-carrier trailer. Which are serious money.
But with a few trailer parts, some sheet steel, new tyres and brakes, hey presto and the job is done. It even passed inspection by the insurance people.
I once had a girlfriend whose grandfather had to flee Hungary after cutting down a statue of Stalin in the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
Mr Szego had no strong political beliefs but, when asked, felt he had to perform this job as “nobody do it properly… [sic] only me” which was pretty much his catchphrase.
When the Russians returned, somewhat peeved about their effigy, he fled to England and made a career fabricating extraction equipment for nuclear power stations, which requires a certain finesse with the tools.
If I know anything about metalwork it is entirely due to afternoons in Danny’s workshop, where I learned that a millimetre is a light year and if it’s not perfect it goes on the scrapheap.
I’ll never be in the same league as such craftsmen, but I’m convinced that not only can a decent farm workshop save some serious bills, it can, on occasion, be an uplifting place to demonstrate any latent artistic expression.
And you can always play music on the radio.