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Well, that was an adventure…

In many ways, I have led a blessed or charmed life. I’ve never had to be transported in an ambulance, never been hospitalised (apart from once for a scheduled tonsillectomy when I was about six) and have never had any major medical problems that needed urgent or emergency treatment.

That all changed a couple of weeks ago when I discovered late one night that I had gallstones. Not only that, but one of the little buggers had decided to block up the neck of my gallbladder, leading to inflammation, infection and all manner of bad things.

I spent an initial night in A&E before things settled a little and I was sent home. However, the next day it came back with a vengeance and I was back in A&E before being transferred from the local hospital to the main regional hospital about 80 miles away.

If you’ve ever had a gallbladder problem, you’ll know just how much it hurts. Absolute screaming bloody agony. That pretty much sums up my first five or six days on the ward, connected to a painkiller pump (so I could bang the button for pain relief whenever I needed it) and being filled with all manner of IV antibiotics as if they had a massive batch they needed to use up before their best-before date. Eventually, the pain did largely subside and they could take me off the pump but the infection wasn’t playing ball. One night my body temperature reached 41 Celsius and I was pretty much away with the fairies. It did then come down a little, but blood tests showed that we still weren’t winning. Things were improving slowly, but something clearly had to be done.

Normally in cases like this, just removing the gallbladder entirely would be the number one surgical option. Unfortunately, two years of pandemic has left the hospital with a huge backlog and the operating theatres are already booked solid. I was ill, but it wasn’t enough of an emergency to clear a theatre slot and get me straight in. Also, given the degree of infection and the fact that any operation would have to have been a fully open procedure (as opposed to keyhole surgery) it was too risky to do it anyway. So I was given a “percutaneous cholecystostomy” instead.

“A per-who choly-wit-what?” I hear you ask? Yeah, it’s a bit of a medical mouthful but it basically means they have fitted an external drain to my gallbladder to get rid of all the bile, ick and general nastiness that was in there. It’s a little pipe that comes out of my body just below the ribs on my right hand side and is connected to a plastic bag that I have to carry around with me. Like a colostomy, but on a smaller scale and draining the gallbladder rather than my colon.

I finally came home last Sunday. The drain did the trick and I’ve been improving steadily since it was put in. It’ll remain with me for the next five or six weeks, at which point I’ll go back in for some tests and scans and – hopefully – they’ll be able to remove it. At that point I’ll be put on the waiting list for gallbladder removal surgery but that will be the standard laparoscopic (keyhole) version that is much less risky and easier to recover from. That’s the general plan anyway.

It’s been an unpleasant time. Throughout all of it, I’m incredibly grateful to the doctors, nurses, ancillary staff, cleaners, porters, radiologists and everyone else who works in the Scottish NHS. I know it’s not perfect and it has its challenges (as does the NHS in England and Wales and Northern Ireland) but I dread to think what the last couple of weeks would have cost if I lived somewhere such as the US. Whatever issues it may have and problems it may face, the NHS is a jewel in this country’s crown and we should all of us fight tooth and nail to stop it being sliced up and sold off to the highest bidder. Healthcare free at the point of need should be an absolute human right and it’s a sad indictment of politicians and their corporate cronies that this isn’t the case all over the world.

The last couple of weeks have also taught me a few lessons about anxiety and worry. I’ve always been a bit of a worrier (“bit?” – that’s an understatement!) but I think I’m finally beginning to learn that there is only a scant handful of really important things that deserve that kind of attention. All the other stuff I used to worry about is no big deal and shouldn’t be given the time of day. So, for all that it’s been a rough ride, I hope that I’ll be coming out of it feeling much better both physically and mentally. It might take a little while but, after the last couple of weeks, I’m OK with that.

July 9, 2022
I’ve got a problem with me knob…

I have a friend called Colin. Colin is a great bloke. Towards the end of last year, he came to me with a bit of a problem. It turns out he was having bother with his knob.

No, hang on, that doesn’t sound right.

OK, he was having trouble with his rusty ring.

No, no, that doesn’t sound any better.

OK, where to start. First things first, it isn’t strictly speaking Colin’s knob (or rusty ring).

If it’s anyone’s I suppose you’d have to say it’s God’s. Or, at least, it’s the property of God’s chosen and appointed religious representatives responsible for our local church. It’s the door knob you see. Or the door handle anyway, since it’s a knob on the inside (which is fine) and a rather nice forged ring on the outside (which is not).

Years of use had seen the little piece of metal that holds the ring wear away to a sliver and then, ultimately, to nothing at all with the inevitable result that the handle had become detached altogether (see Exhibits A and B below).

Exhibit A – this one don’t work no more!

Exhibit B – very broken indeed

So, the question is, could your friendly local blacksmith-in-training fix it? At first, I thought I’d just cut the end off, forge a new piece to hold the existing ring and then weld that back onto the existing bar that goes through the door. Then I had second thoughts. And third thoughts. And maybe even fourth thoughts.

Step 1 – I’ll make an entire new bar to pass through the door. While secure enough, the existing one didn’t seat fully into the door knob on the inside. It was also looking a bit old and worn. Unfortunately, the smallest square bar that I had to hand was too big to fit into the hole on the knob. So an interesting exercise in delicate forging ensued as I had to take at least 150mm of slightly fatter square bar and consistently reduce its thickness by only a millimeter or two, while retaining its squareness. Normally you might do this with some kind of draw plate or rolling machine but I don’t have either so it was all done old-school with the hammer and anvil. Once done, I needed to drill a hole in the end in just the right place for the bolt that holds the knob onto the bar. This is a hole that is nearly as wide as the bar itself so this was a slightly scary bit – one slip with the drill and it would cut through the edge of the bar and I’d have to start all over. Thankfully, I managed it.

Step 2 – forge a new piece to hold the handle (ring). This involved starting with a thicker piece of square bar and then using a spring fuller and working it on the anvil to flatten the end evenly on both sides. Once flattened to the right sort of thickness, a hole could be drilled to take the ring. Then the new piece could be welded onto the end of the new bar. (Forging this was probably the easiest part of the whole process.)

Shiny new door handle

Step 3 – forge a new ring for the handle. The old one was a bit small, so I ended up making the new one a fair bit bigger as well so it’s easier to hold and turn. This was another little challenge as I first had to put a nice even twist along most of the length of 270mm of square bar. I then had to find a way to bend it into the right sort of shape without knocking the edges off the twist. This one, I admit, took two attempts to get right and finally involved making the twist in two separate sections that had to line up with one another. Slightly tricky but I got there. I also had to forge down the ends of the ring into little pointy things that would fit through the hole where it attaches to the door fitting.

Step 4 – after a visit to see the church door in question, I noticed that there is a rather large hole where the bar passes through the wooden door to reach the latch mechanism inside. So I’ll make a little back plate that fits onto the bar where it goes through the door and sits just behind the external handle (the ring). This was mainly just fabrication (cutting the plate) although I had to make the hole in the centre square so that it turns with the bar. That needed to be done with the metal hot and using a square punch but I didn’t have one. Luckily I’ve still got some lengths of tool steel in stock so a square punch was duly forged and then used to punch the hole in the plate. Result!

New ring and back plate to hide hole in door

So, after two or three sessions in the forge (and, to be fair, quite a long while after Colin first asked me about it) the job was finally done.

If I’m honest and being my perfectionist self, there are several things that bug me about it. The shaping of the ring isn’t quite symmetrical, the ends of the ring aren’t quite the same and one of them got a bit bashed while I was forging it down. The welding where the ring holder attaches to the bar could also be a lot better (although it will thankfully be fairly well hidden once the whole thing is in the door). However, overall, I’m happy with how this has come together and, although I’m not really religious myself, it does give me pleasure to think that I’ve done something good for the church and the local community here. I’m also fairly glad I didn’t need to remake the door knob for the inside! The best way to make something like that is to cast it rather than forge it and I don’t have the wherewithal to start up a foundry and casting business alongside the blacksmithing. So the original door knob will still be doing its duty on the inside of the church door but everything else is new and, hopefully, will last as long as the original one did before someone has to fix it again one day.

UPDATE: The new handle has now been fitted and, even if I say so myself, looks rather fine.

The church door, complete with new handle…

…in all its glory.

February 8, 2022
A new look and purpose for my blog

Recently I was bemoaning my woeful lack of blogging … *again*, so Glenda donned her consultant’s hat and offered to walk me through her new client questionnaire to work out just why I wanted a blog anyway. The results were quite eye-opening and have given me a bit of a metaphorical kick up the pantaloons.

Turns out I love making connections with people, particularly those who are interested in random and eclectic stuff because that makes them interesting people in my book. (Mmmm, books ….) The blog has always been a place for me to express and indulge in my curiosity about those things that tickle my fancy, including books, science, art, stories, music and of course blacksmithing.

Now what I hope to do in the future is approach blog writing more as a conversation starter and I would love it if you joined in and left me a comment or use the contact page to message me if you don’t want to make a comment public.

I’ve also started a mailing list so you can get my blog posts delivered to your inbox if you wish. It’s all above board and done through Mailchimp so your personal data is subject to very stringent data protection (and all within your own control to opt out or update) which is something I feel very strongly about. It also means that if I do anything monumentally interesting, I can let you know all about it. You’ll find a sign up box around here somewhere (exactly where depends on what flavour of device you are using to read this).

So here’s a shout out to the inquisitive, enquiring, questioning, invesigative minds – what fires up your curiosity, floats your boat, whets your whistle or gets your goat? (thank you, thank you, here all week, etc)

Go on, give me a new ~~rabbit hole~~ topic to explore.

February 2, 2022
The best laid plans and all that
Things were going so well too.

Regular followers of my adventures (or Glenda‘s) will know that we have spent the last few years ploughing our own creative furrows here in south-west Scotland. As any artist, writer, musician or other self-employed creative types will tell you, it’s not always the easiest way to earn a living. In fact, sometimes, you don’t actually earn a living at all and have to turn to other things in order to put food on the table and keep the wolves from the door. So we’ve trimmed our sails here, cut our cloth there and fallen back onto other skills and opportunities where necessary. We ran our previous house in Portpatrick as a B&B for a while and, more recently, we have done various web and graphic design projects and other bits of computer/technical and business support stuff.

However, the overall plan always centred on the creative things. As Glenda’s work became better known, we started to see more income coming from her paintings and her hand-dyed yarns and textiles. Being accepted into the Spring Fling open studios event last year also gave things a nice boost, both in terms of reaching a wider audience and selling work. Thanks to that and to the other stuff we had been doing, we even saw our little business turn its first profit last year – a small one certainly, but very welcome after a couple of years of losses while we were getting things off the ground.
Meanwhile, I threw a bit of a curve ball into the mix when the spirit of the old forge here possessed me and started me on my path to becoming a creative blacksmith. Now, obviously, this side of things is going to take a very long time, lots of practice and a fair quantity of mistakes along the way if I want to get any good at it, but we sat down and came up with a revised plan and vision that included me bashing lumps of hot metal, while Glenda continued painting and busying herself in her impromptu dye studio.
With this in mind, the idea of Fine View Arts was born. We started working towards being ready to open the forge (and our home) to the public for four days a week from Easter. The house would be set up as a gallery for Glenda’s work, while I would be in the forge, doing demos, discussing possible commissions (if they were within my current capabilities) and selling smaller pieces. Glenda also worked out a timetable of classes and workshops that she could teach here through the Summer season. So far, so good. A new website was built, new signage designed and ordered and we began the frenzy of tidying, re-arranging and general sorting-out that would be needed to be ready for visitors.

The new signage arrived at just about the time that we were all hearing about this novel coronavirus in China and how it had already spread to several other places and taken a hold in Italy. The rest, as they say, is history…

So we ended up being the eager hosts who planned the party and then discovered no-one was going to be turning up. For several months at the very least, maybe for a year or more, who knows. Having pretty much wiped out our savings over the last couple of years, we had been kind of counting on all this stuff going ahead, continuing to be profitable and providing us with our living for the future.

Having now lived through the humongous mound of noisome ordure that has been the majority of 2020 and given where we all now find ourselves, I’m sure that many of you will be joining me in a heartfelt cry of “Bugger! Bugger! Bugger!” And, possibly, “Oh bollocks!” (Far stronger expletives are also available and may have been used at some point.)

So it’s going to be back to the drawing board, at least in part. We’ll still be doing creative things, but we may have to see about focussing more online. Or perhaps branching out again and doing something else altogether, we haven’t worked it all out yet. The one thing that we do know is that if we’re all sensible and keep on looking out for each other, we’ll all get through this thing in the end. At some point, life will return to some semblance of normality and – hopefully – we’ll still be here to welcome you in some shape, form or fashion. Until then, take care of yourselves and keep safe and well.
November 24, 2020
Rage, rage against the dying of the light…

At around this time nine years ago, I was at my parents’ house. A couple of hours earlier, I had been with my father when he drew his last breath, lying in a hospital bed that had been installed in his own bedroom as part of an end-of-life care package to allow him to spend his last couple of weeks at home with his family and friends around him. By this hour of the night, I vaguely recall that the undertakers had already been and gently, respectfully collected his body and taken it away to begin the necessary preparations for the funeral. Or perhaps they were still there, I’m not really sure about the timings. I was not in the clearest frame of mind.

Nine years. It seems such a long time and yet it also seems like only yesterday. He had been ill for a while, spending several months in and out of hospital for the previous couple of years. For all his – relatively – small stature, he was a strong and determined man who had looked the Grim Reaper full in the face a few times before and told him “Not yet!” But it comes to us all eventually and, when the time came for my father, he went bravely and peacefully on his way.

Of course, the irony was that my mother was the one who had been seriously ill for so long. But, as is often the case, it was the spouse or partner – the soulmate, true love and years-long carer – who succumbed first.

Grief never really goes away. It changes, become less sharp, more diffuse with the passing of the years. But it is always there. It doesn’t take much to remind you and re-open the wounds, even if they’re not quite so raw and agonising any more. The trick at those times is to remember the good, the joy, the laughter, the happy days and be grateful for all the time that you did have. Be grateful that that particular person was there in the world and in your life.

Hug your loved ones tonight and every night. Give them the precious gift of your time and treasure every moment that they give you. They are the true riches in this world.

October 3, 2020
Well, so much for that plan…

About a year ago, I quit the whirly hurly-burly of social media. I had had my fill of this toxic 21st century phenomenon and decided that my life would be nicer, calmer, more productive and generally all-round-better without the entrenched arseholery of Twitter, the pointless faux-networking of LinkedIn or the constant data-mining and social manipulations of Facebook.

And, by and large, it was the right decision. It freed up time and mental energy for other things and the amount of generalised idiocy (corporate or individual) that I encountered on a day-to-day basis was greatly reduced.

“But Adrian!” I hear you cry. “You’re back on Facebook again aren’t you? So you were talking rubbish! Ner-ner-ne-ner!!”

True, I did return to Facebook just over month ago. There were two main reasons for this. First of all, during these strange times in which we find ourselves living, it offered a quick and easy way to keep in touch with family and friends. Not just far-flung family and friends either, but also those folks whom I would normally have been able to pop and see in person but who have been rendered off-limits by the assorted lockdowns and other restrictions that we are all having to endure. Secondly, I was painfully aware that, by removing myself from social media generally, and Facebook in particular, I was leaving all the heavy lifting to Glenda when it came to sharing what we do and promoting our artistic ventures. It’s an unfortunate truth that running any kind of business today pretty much requires a social media presence of some sort, Facebook, Instagram, etc. So I was feeling a little guilty that I’d effectively left Glenda to deal with all that while I was sailing along serenely having nothing at all to do with Mark Zuckerberg’s sordid empire.

In the end, these two factors were enough to persuade me to join Facebook again. I’m treating it slightly differently this time and, so far, it appears to be working rather better for me. I don’t know whether it’s the way I’ve configured my account, but I’m seeing less advertising, less extraneous crap and more good stuff. Not sure how long that will last, but it’s quite pleasant while it does.

September 10, 2020