I found a whole load of timber for my shop… yay! I think it might be part of someone’s fence or something like that, but it’s all in a big pile in the woods near to Barnes Bridge. I was out climbing trees since the weather was so nice and I spotted this big ass pile of old fence posts and planks or something from up on top of a branch. Some of it’s a little bit dodgy but I think once I get it out in the sun bleach it with a little vinegar for a bit it’ll age fine and not rot on me.

There’s this awesome tree house round the corner from the planks so I think they were probably for that. Doesn’t look like it’s been used for a couple years or so and there’s almost nothing left of it, but it’s a really good tree for climbing. When you get up to the house there’s a little message:

“You have passed the first test. Now you must spend the night!”

It would be amazingly cute except that underneath it’s got:

“Prepare your ass… Willy’s coming.”

Disturbing, no? The ass bit looks like it’s been added a couple years later since the writing hasn’t faded nearly as much and isn’t on any of the planks that have broken and fallen through, but it looks like it’s written in the same marker so I’m guessing what’s happened is that it used to be a hide-out and the kids who used it kept the marker in there, then they outgrew it or something and stopped bothering to repair it any more. Sitting in there felt like I was part of someone’s childhood and it almost felt a little haunted or something like that, filled with the memories of the kids who lived there maybe. Also made me feel a little sad to more or less be a grownup, it felt really good to be up there but somehow I didn’t quite belong. Got to put that right, I’ll make it mine and use the timber I don’t need for the shop to fix it up. I’ll have to leave it behind when I move out, but at least then I can know that I had a treehouse before I was a grownup.

But anyway, back to decorating the shop, it’s nice that shabby-chic is in fashion… there’s no way I could make my shop respectable and good looking in an expensive designer furniture sort of way so the timing’s actually pretty good. I can make everything from scrap and junk people are throwing away and if I can pick up any random antique French furniture while I’m at it all the better. The funny thing is actually how much people are paying for a shabby look, just type it in to ebay or whatever and you’ll see beat up chairs for hundreds of pounds and old candlesticks that look like they’re about to fall apart for not much less. Don’t get me wrong, I love this stuff, I just can’t believe how much people are willing to pay for replicas of things made to look like they’re old. Just one of those sick fashion things. I wasn’t really planning on buying on anything so I don’t really feel bad about all the prices. I feel a little miffed that in a year or two it’ll be out of fashion and I’ll have to buy furniture that’s not rotting, but for the moment I’ll feel all smug and superior when I find real scrap in skips and make all my shelves from random bits of timber.

We had the first barbeque of the season today, yay! We had burgers and sausages and barbequed bananas stuffed with chocolate, man those are good!