Ted’s shed 20 March, 2010

While we were visiting the UK last year, Joel and I took the opportunity to help my dad, Ted, to put up his new shed. We didn’t get everything done, but had a lot of fun helping with the heavy lifting, three generations of Marsh males at work together.

A home away from home

I popped in on my way through the country to a meeting in Geneva. The shed is finished now, and I find Ted is using it to renovate houses. Doll’s houses, that is – of which he has three rather splendid examples under way. He also enjoys a bit of glass engraving, and assorted tinkering with electrical items.

It’s already a nest of wires, as befits a man who once earned his living as an electrician. There’s also a fine print of three Spitfires, reflecting his airforce career.

A new release? Taking a shot at archery 23 August, 2008

As mentioned in the last post, Jane and I have become GNAS-accredited archery instructors. That’s thanks to Dean and Becky at the Monks Yard- they organised the course and had a couple of spare places for us.

GNAS, short for Grand National Archery Society, is in the process of a re-brand as Archery UK to make it more appealing to the young.  It’s easy to be sniffy about such image-making, but we all agreed that the new logo is quite clever and the name certainly tells you what’s in the tin.

Philip J van Buren teaches us to serve strings

Philip J van Buren (pictured, showing us how to put a protective binding called ‘serving’ on our bow strings) was our coach for four unexpectedly intense days. He is a member of the Archery UK coaching squad and an author and leading expert on the subject. Pony-tailed and mischievous, Philip is a passionate advocate of the sport and has a handful of funny anecdotes for almost any aspect you could drop into the conversation.

So what does one have to do to become an archery instructor?  Teach archery, of course!  So we did that several times over the weekend, perfecting our presentation of the 10 minute opening lesson needed to get a beginner going with barebow recurve archery. You also have to be able to show safe ways to set up an indoor and outdoor archery range, understand the principles of setting up a beginner’s range in a hypothetical recreational centre, learn about the different types of equipment and spotting faults in it, be able to pick the right size and weight (that is, draw strength) of bow for an individual, understand the physics of the bow and the biomechanics of shooting properly, be able to talk knowledgably about various other types of archery, know how to help someone progress to ‘freestyle’ archery, know how to apply serving and nocks (arrow guides) to bow strings, and fletches (flights) and piles (points) to arrows. Oh, and being able to hit the target with a few arrows yourself also helps.

Anyway, you get the idea. We were doing this in a group of 10 from nine to six each day, with two hours of reading homework each night, and an exam applied by an external assessor at the end. Quite a course, but (and here I may be influenced by our successful outcome) a brilliant way to spend four days.

Now all we’ve got to do is find a way to apply this wonderful new skill here in Kenya.  We’ll let you know what we find out. Watch this space!

Holiday round-up 22 August, 2008

You’d think that being on holiday would give you more time to keep up to date with the blog, but it doesn’t work out that way.

Part of the problem was that, after leaving Geneva for Dorset (SW of the UK) it was overcast most of the time and rained a lot of the time, so we were more occupied in keeping the kids busy than we might otherwise have been.  There is just so much weather in Britain!  Thank goodness for the British library system, which is one of the things we’ve missed most in Africa – apart from our couple of years in South Africa, where they Randburg Public Library in Johannesburg was our regular Saturday morning walk.

Some of our time, including Nigel’s birthday surprise meal, was spent at the Monks Yard near Ilminster in Somerset. This beautiful conversion of historic farm buildings into a conference centre, coffee bar, restaurant and office hot-desking complex is managed by Jane’s brother’s wife Becky and the boy himself, Dean, and is the business venture of Becky’s family. It’s brand new and a very exciting, if exhausting, venture for all of them.

We also spent time looking at the buy-to-let market in the south west, and met some really interesting and helpful people, including the delightful Christian couple who own Girlings, the retirement rental specialists. Christian businesses seem to come in two extremes; the ones that are so poorly-run that you wish they wouldn’t advertise their credentials, and the ones that enable their owners and staff to live out their faith in a way that gives you a new view of the kingdom of God. It was encouraging to meet a couple who genuinely seem to live in that spirit of faith-based humanitarian entrepreneurism.

On the more recreational side we watched a giant octopus playing with a Rubik’s Cube in the Weymouth Sea Life Centre, took friends for a walk on the Iron Age hill fort behind Jane’s parents’ house, and re-directed a small river on the local beach.

Most exciting for Jane and I, we became GNAS accredited archery instructors. But that’s worth a blog of its own, so I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.