My Sheddie:
Sheddies name
Tim Baber
Shed name
Selfbuild or off the shelf shed?
Architect designed, boatman built very substantially in the 1970’s, this shed has stood up to 100 mile an hour winds so it is a survivor in the shed evolutionary scheme of things.
Why have you got a shed? uses etc
This shed and another one for variety on a similar beach four miles away are my bolt-holes from a simple life to an even simpler life- for a day.
For a day a rich man can play at being a peasant and a peasant can play at being a landowner. it is a place for transformation, recovery or respite from a world that is too big, looking out over a dear little sea, the Isle of Wight Needles being 8 miles away, probviding the view and a suitably distant distraction for one’s gaze.
The Pirelli calendar is a poor substitute, although I think there is room for combining these two attractions in some way, it just hasn’t happened yet in my little world. I am working on that as I sit in my recliner. This is an iconic back-drop for a pho-shoot. And I have the keys.
see http://www.msbnews.co.uk
or
http://web.mac.com/beachhutman
How would you describe your shed?
This is a unique pyramid-roofed, black micro-shed or hut. It is a near cube shaped 7 x 7 foot beach hut originally used to start sailing boat races with a small cannon on the 14 x 7 foot enclosed balcony. Looks great with a flag flying any time of the day or night and in any weather. In the winter the low setting sun turns the shed a beautiful Gold colour, visible from Mudeford Quay, Dorset.
Who are your shed inspirations?
1. Nature, nurture and the need for shelter.
2….the Apple iPod with battery powered speakers or before that the transistor radio. Before that the mouth organ (if it is Larry Adler), before that maybe just the perceptive company and human voice of a happy friend (of the opposite sex preferably).
Intimacy welcomes a friend you can listen to and give your full attention to ( in a small space) according to both your needs, abilities or desires.
This is nothing new.
(People call me ‘Mr Scary’). I think they are being ironic.
3. Whoever invented hammocks or La Fuma recliner chairs.
4. My fathers advice to “do nothing and rest afterwards”.
5. My mother’s womb and the first clothes that offered some comfort to my little system, like veryone else if they could remember that care.
6. My ancestors reaching back millennia, (everything has been done before)
7. A wider conception of life outside my world, as suggested maybe by the sentiments expressed in Carl Glick’s book called “A Treasury of Masonic Thought”. Every shed should have an equivalent for such inspiration.
8. The voice and sentiments of Mary Black, The words of MB that have affected my life. I want her to benefit from such a testimony as have arisen from time spent in my ‘shed’ thinking of her words.
I am thinking of “Fields of Gold” right now. And listening to it again.
Such a voice is a ‘perpetual return’ in my mind. A paradise just out of reach. A tantalus. A harmonica of sympathy for a love found and lost.
Future Shed plans
see http://web.mac.com/beachhutman for the background to why this shed needs no changes made to it.
This shed is a perfect embodiment of shed life. It offers an inspiration if not a realisation of achieving some change in our lives or outlook. maybe that is why it cost £40,000 three years ago.
The only improvements needed in having such a shed as this are a longer life, a less employed future, something done about the seasons and maybe the weather and the onset of darkness on occasions.
Oh, and the arrival of a loved one (disturbing me from my slumber and tantalisingly, till that future moment,my fettered dreams). She would be on a week-end pass from her all too time-consuming travels, occupations or studies. And she would ‘get’ sheds like I do ~ and offer a perpetual return as she grows older and I younger just like the planets and stars and cycles that have so far kept us apart. For we need our dreams.
Without that wish, a shed could be a miserable place where we only “live in quiet desperation”, as Thoreau said in “Walden”.
How did you find out about our community?
I found out about readersheds from somewhere in the ether, probably from the internet…about as close to paradise or magic as I am ever likely to get.
And I am not kidding when I say , the internet must have been invented to share sheds and shed life, nothing else is important, except maybe the weather if your shed is a long way away, but remember, (to misquote) Freud, “there is no such thing as bad weather, just an inadequate shed.” (Freud could be very cruel).
Ignoring him, I am minded to suggest that you see everything as an allegory for shed-life. here (below) William Blake is talking about a grain of sand, but think shed instead, and better still a shed with a laptop in the corner, for the great idea in, or the great idea out, a window in a wall that would otherwise keep us separate, obstructed by the passage of time, or distance..
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
What word would you use to sum up Sheds
infinity
If any other sheddies would like to be featured in this Spot, the fill out this Q & A Form and I will get back you!
