It was at Easter this year that I hit the buffers.  Breakdown, burnout, work-related stress … it all amounts to the same.  I started breaking down in tears at work and continued to do so for the initial few weeks of my resulting sixteen weeks sick leave, until I could feel the stress and the emotions dissipating.

 

During this time, three ideas, three threads, came together.

 

For several years, I have said that when I retire, I would like to do a boatbuilding course at the IBTC (International Boatbuilding Training College) in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.   One morning, I looked on the IBTC website, and saw that they had an Open Day coming up.  I booked a place, keen to see if the course was really what I had hoped it would be.

 

My Father was a mechanical engineer, then CDT teacher.  Metalwork, woodwork, blacksmithing … he did it all, and he amassed a large collection of tools and machines.  When he died in 2015, I inherited this collection.  I didn’t think I would get into metalworking, so I gave his metal lathe and other such items to The Gosport Shed, but I had a workshop built in our garden, to house my tools and bench, and my Dad’s wood lathe, and his many other tools and machines.

 

For some time now, I have been yearning to use these tools, and to make things in wood. Although I have started to do some woodturning, it has been hard to find the time to do this, what with the hours I have been working.  I resigned myself to the idea that I would have to wait until I have more time in retirement.

 

During those early weeks of sick leave, I sought advice, support and comfort from my family, and from close and trusted colleagues. One of my younger Partners – well, they’re almost all younger than me – suggested a book on Mindfulness: “Finding Peace in a Frantic World.  Knowing my fondness for poetry, she also recommended an anthology of poetry: “The Poetry of Presence.”  I ordered them both, and the latter volume arrived on the eve of my visit to the Open Day at the IBTC.  That evening, as I let the book fall open at a random page, I came across a poem, written by Judy Sorum Brown, an American lady, who does leadership consultancy work. Here it is:

 

 

Wooden Boats

 

I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
Who knows precisely how a board
Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
Can shape it to the hull.

The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;
It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.

Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?

Could we return to more of craft
Within our lives,
And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
By letting our hands linger
On the product of our artistry?
Could we recall what we have known
But have forgotten,
The gifts within ourselves,
Each other too,
And thus transform a world
As he and friends do,
Shaping steaming oak boards
Upon the hulls of wooden boats?

 

 

As I read this poem, on the eve of my visit to the IBTC, it felt like something of an omen.  It resonated with all that I envisaged in the art and skill of boatbuilding.   Needless to say, I enjoyed the open day immensely, certain that here I would be a round peg in a round hole, happy and fulfilled again, but in a new way: by learning and applying newly-acquired skills; by the satisfaction of crafting something beautiful and functional with my hands, using age old techniques and simple tools – Dad’s tools.

 

 

Somehow, these three threads came together that evening: my ambition to work with boats, which I have always loved; my desire to make use of my Father’s tools; and my desire to craft things out of wood.  They came together with a poem so timely to my situation, and so resonant with my need, that its discovery seems more than just coincidence.