With These Hands
My great-grandfather was a builder, as was my grandfather and most of his brothers; if I were to look hard enough, I could probably find the brick-and-mortar evidence of their working lives scattered across half the country.
On the other hand, I am to building what chocolate is to teapots. Not being blessed with the Smith aptitude for all things handy, I opted instead to pursue my love for English literature down a more academic avenue. Please, don’t get me wrong; I would dearly love to have been a master carpenter, but my uncanny innate ability to locate my thumb with anything remotely resembling a hammer or a sharp blade ruled that out of my career prospects early on.
There must, however, be some tiny, recessive glimmer of these distant genes within me, for when academic pursuits dwindle over the six weeks of the summer holidays, the more physical duties take over. Painting and wallpapering; patching cement and painting; clearing the guttering and dozens of other small jobs too numerous to mention tend to find their way onto my summer ‘to-do’ list and, if I’m completely honest, I don’t mind this one bit.
In part, it does compensate for my lack of building skill that, more often than not, exasperates my wife. It also allows me to feel a little more useful from time to time, but this is usually about as far as it goes.
The main reason, however, for my liking of summer’s ‘to-do’ list is the feeling of preparation linked to seasonal change. Long gone for most of us are the days of reaping, pickling, salting, smoking, curing and storing, but there lingers for me a tiny remnant of this seasonal weather-eye in the pre-winter proofing of the house and the preparations for our foray into autumn.
One notable job of recent years was the shed. There was a small, 6ft x 4ft shed already in the garden when we moved in some years ago, but time and decay took their toll, leaving me badly in need of a replacement home for the fishing gear, decorating bumf and gardening odds-and-ends. With limited time and funds I managed to locate a shed for sale from a company on the internet, with delivery included in the price of £250. It seemed too good to be true but I had no more money to spend on it and therefore no choice. I clicked the PAY NOW button and crossed my fingers, taking delivery of a 8ft x 5ft carcass a couple of days later. I had roped in my neighbour Steve, a man as spectacularly devoid of DIY talent as myself, to help me unload and build the thing, and so, twenty minutes after arrival, the delivery driver waved a cheery farewell, leaving Steve and I to get cracking.
It immediately became apparent why the shed had only cost £250: chipboard roof panels that weren’t quite long enough, barely enough roofing felt, not enough support for the roof and a pair of unbraced doors that seemed to give up on life a little after hanging, sagging from rectangular to limp rhomboids, leaving a graduated gap between the tops of the doors and the door frame through which I could have driven a mid-sized family car. Still, we had no choice but to push on, so we gamely set to work in what must have resembled some ridiculous parody of an Amish barn-raising, with hammers and screwdrivers flying around in between the curses. Nevertheless, in spite of ourselves, something that was recognisable as a new shed stood at the bottom of my garden come day’s end.
Of course, all the aforementioned shortcomings meant that, via the rain, damp soon found its way into the structure’s old-before-its-time bones, meaning that two years later it was left in need of a complete overhaul. I spent over half the shed’s original cost on ply sheets, timber, roofing felt and screws, and found myself once again standing in front of this wooden challenge to my masculinity. Surely, following that first “success”, I must have reignited some of that old, deep-down Smith DNA? “I won’t hold my breath”, Rachel muttered.
I hammered and sawed, measured and screwed before hammering some more and, finally, finished off with a few slaps of wood stain before stepping back to admire my handiwork.
“Not bad. I’m almost impressed. Almost.” Rachel sidled up behind me, the faintest note of cynicism still slightly tainting her voice.
I could barely drag myself out of the bath later that evening, but I had to smile to myself when I heard the first faint drops of rain spatter the bathroom window before they intensified into a more even hissing rhythm. I couldn’t resist nipping out into the garden to check on my efforts, pulling on a jacket and swapping my slippers for boots before trotting through the rain to unlock the shed doors and step inside. Nothing. Not a drip nor a damp patch in sight, only the pleasurable perfume of cut wood and a satisfying ache deep in my bones.
Words: Simon Smith
Illustration: Cerys Rees
Autumn, I Know You
Autumn, I expect you. Always, you arrive in the company of others, led astray. With all the heady excesses of late summer, you are filled to the brim; on some hedonistic, full-tilt charge you just get up and go, knowing full well that the rest of us will follow.
Autumn, I consider you when there comes, as always, that time of reflection, that looking-back/looking-forward border country of indecision always best played out in unhurried conversation and slow moments like these, taken in quiet corners and the coolness beneath trees.
Autumn, I understand you; I know what it is you always hanker to become. You are the closet glamourpuss lingering shyly, a chameleon in the background, carrying all your colours, so many colours, with you even when you’re not yet wearing them.
Autumn, I admire you. You’ve always been the artistic sort; through you runs the paradox of senescent creation, a fall-short perfectionist in everything, never afraid to scrub out the year’s preliminary sketches and go back to beginnings.
Autumn, I praise you, praise your generosity, the benevolent uncle at the family wedding, dispensing leaves time and time again like handfuls of the heart’s small-change.
Autumn, I doubt you. I know how you turn, how things will sometimes rumble on, how the contrary storms will build and build and wear at the edges of everything: the streets, the days, even me, until the world is scoured bare.
Autumn, I pity you. As the light begins to sputter out, your fatigue is everywhere – in temperatures that just give up the ghost and fall away, and in shortening days that slink back through trees rendered shabby as old cardigan sleeves.
Autumn, I miss you. Your fragility shatters into a billion pieces, is carried away, inconsequential, on the air, and leaves me watching your departure until it seems that you were never even there.
Autumn, I know you.
