George diaries from his shed where he is carving. He explains the transformative effect, as a person with dementia, of having an object of focus. This is an amazing diary.
Good morning from North Shropshire. It’s George Rook here, in my shed. I thought I’d do a diary while I was carving. At least, I’m prepping for my new piece – next piece. Which means basically, having taken a half log, about a foot long, from the store – it’s willow – I have split it lengthways. So I’ve now got a piece by about a foot long, by roundabout three quarters of an inch to an inch wide, which I’m going to work on now, to smooth off on one side, and then draw my design on.
I must say, I mean I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: doing something like this is just very a) rewarding when you get to the end of it, b) all-focusing, all… what do I mean? It takes my whole thought. As soon as I stop thinking about what I’m doing, I make a mistake; and put a cut in the wrong place, or whatever. So it’s a really good way of actually dismissing everything else from my mind, and just thinking about this, and what it will look like, and how I can use the little knots in the wood.
This time, like the last one I did – I want to do more or less a repeat. So, the background will be a relief contour of the view of the Brecon Beacons. And in the foreground will be a red kite, sort of swooping, I suppose you could say – gliding. I know it works really well, I’ve done it a couple of times now. What I’m struggling with is how to create, more or less in the foreground of the background if you see what I mean, the appearance of trees, some woods which are in the original picture. So I’ve got to have a go at doing some sort of – a whole lot of fine scratchy grooves, veins whatever. I don’t want them to look like trees because I’ll never manage that. I just want it to look as if there is something that you could imagine to be trees in the distance – well, not distance, foreground. And, some valleys. So – one or two shadows as well.
So, off we go. So I’m going to start by using my very large… what would I call it. It’s a draw knife, but it’s more than a knife, it’s a draw blade about 8 inches long. Really really good, I got it for Christmas. Having asked for it, for Christmas. So, I’ll stop now, but I’ll come back in a short while.
So: imagine ten minutes has gone by, and I have now smoothed off the bit on which I’m going to draw my red kite. I want it to be a decent sized kite, so it really stands out. Now I’ve got to take away, take down quite a lot of wood from the other bit, so the kite will then stand out as a relief. I’m talking about probably quarter of an inch or so, what’s that. Twenty-five mil: six mil, seven mil, something like that? Which is a fair amount of clunking with the large chisel. So – I’ll do that now. Till later.
So: ten minutes more. I think I’ve worked out a way of just putting in some trees, as if they’re in the distance. Like a little woodland. Using a V-shaped little hand tool. Anyway we’ll see, I’ll try it. I can always take it out later by just reducing the wood.
So it’s time to start now on the outline of the actual bird itself. Ah – this bit is quite, well to begin with it’s quite rough, leaving plenty of spare; and then you gradually refine it. And as I’ve written elsewhere, there are times when I get halfway through these things and it looks awful, and I think “oh, how am I going to get this right”. But, it exercises this brain, and I am reading a really good book called “Keep Sharp” by a neurosurgeon, just published, and it is excellent for explaining how the brain works, and how in fact it degenerates, for all sorts of reasons, not just amyloid and not just Tau protein, but almost always a combination of all sorts of stuff, and mostly building up for 20-30 years before you get the symptoms, which most of us knew about.
But in this case, lifestyle, learning things, exercise, diet, alcohol consumption, smoking: all those things contribute to whether your brain stays healthy or not. And if it stays healthy, you are far less likely – or if it does develop, it’ll be much slower – to develop the disease that causes dementia. Now it’s too late for me – although I can keep it as it is, I hope, for a fair while. But I would really recommend – so many younger people – if I’d known this I hope I’d have changed what I’d have done. But certainly, people should know. I’ve been working with the British Heart Foundation a little bit over the last couple of years, to help them promote the connection between heart disease and dementia, and I’m more and more seeing: they are all intertwined.
Anyway, more of that in a future diary, probably. I will get on with my carving, and no doubt you will see on Twitter or somewhere, one day in the next week, what it comes out as. Bye for now.
