Precious Memories

Hi all,
A couple of weeks ago I was in the loft and came across my little box of treasures. There wasn't any silver or gold in that little cardboard box, but what it did hold was still precious to me.

Now that I'm getting older I find that I spend more time looking backwards rather than to the future. I won't get all maudlin because hopefully I've got a few years left in me yet, but the past represents at least 75% of my life.

Anyway, I looked in the box and the memories came flooding back. A lot of them came from the time when I was a £10 pom who had been dragged off to Australia by my parents in 1967. Warm sunshine and golden sandy beaches, mixed with a few snakes and more poisonous spiders than you could shake a boomerang at. Ah I remember it so well.

I still had some letters from my first wife whom I met in Melbourne. Some photos including one of HMS Patris, the ship I returned to good old blighty on. There was also a set of worry beads that I picked up in Athens on the way back and my crossing the equator certificate. I missed the actual ceremony because I was sick with sunstroke and laid up in my cheap cabin way down in the bowels of the ship.There were lots of other small items in that box and I guess most other people have their own box of personal stuff.

Sorry if I've been a bit slow getting to the pyrography, but do you remember that job lot of boxes that I bought? Well I reckoned that memories should not have to put up with living in shoe boxes or biscuit tins.

Below is a box that I did some pyrography on, (actually my wife did most of it; I just gave it a few finishing touches) and I think it would do any body's memories justice.

Doing letters in pyrography can be tedious but at the same time strangely therapeutic. You have to be accurate when doing letters because there is no room for error, but having said that, you don't have to think about anything clever either.

While I'm doing letters with my pyrography iron, I often listen to Harry Chapin or Leonard Cohen on my mp3 player, they take me to another place and the rest of the world just doesn't exist.

My tip for doing letters are:

Do the outlines of the letters first then fill in the centres.
Use a spoon tip
You may find it easier to creep the iron along the wood by doing lots of small movements instead of trying to draw a long straight line.
Make sure your wrist is supported

At the moment I'm working on a commission and I'll tell you more about it in my next post.