Greetings from Altopia
I generally have some project on the go to counteract the many hours I spend sitting behind this screen. I’ve dabbled in making jewellery, working with leather, carving pieces of wood and a whole host of other things. Last winter I built a banjo. Don’t ask me why. I didn’t ‘need, a banjo and probably wouldn’t have the time to play it – it’s just something I decided to do. Typical of me, I began the project with no real idea of what was going to be involved. Nevertheless I persevered, and also, as is often the case, I wanted to have it done before I’d started. What I ended up with was something looking like the sort of curiosity that might have been picked up in a bazaar and brought back from the exotic East by a visiting Crusader in the 12th century. It’s as if I had seen and heard a banjo at some time in the distant past but didn’t really know for sure what it looked like or exactly how it functioned. Of course this isn’t really the case. I’ve owned banjos in the past and can play one tolerably well. What I didn’t possess were the factory made parts which it is impossible for me to produce – so other bits and pieces had to do instead. In short the Alan Butler Mark I banjo resembles a Heath Robinson invention and when played it sounds vaguely like a dog barking.
I suspect I inherited this trait of ‘make do and mend’ from my mother. Growing up in the 1950’s as I did, there wasn’t a great deal of money about; in fact it would be fair to say that we were so poor, when we went to the local park, the ducks used to throw bread at us. Deprivation had long before turned my father into a chronic pessimist, but my mother was made of sterner stuff and obviously decided that financial constraints would not prevent her from having the things her heart desired. If she wanted a new dress, hat or shoes, improvisation was always the key. She would disappear into town and spend coppers on bits and pieces from the milliners, or else go through boxes of old clothes in order to find what she needed and convert it. If she couldn’t afford new shoes, which I suspect was mostly, and could not procure a shoe dye of the shade she wanted, she would search through old paint tins and mix her own colour. Christmas decorations were made from an assortment of the strangest items – jollied up with lots of sparkle and silver paint and as for us kids – no pullover was thrown away if it could be pulled apart and re-knitted into something new – no matter how strange it looked as a result.
All of this was laudable but it did mean that nothing in our house, or on so many occasions the clothes we wore, looked ‘quite’ right. We lived in a sort of Lewis Carroll world, in which most things upon us and around us were somehow odd – in an indefinable but nevertheless disquieting way. I came to call this tendency of my mother ‘aspiration over income’.
Whether this exists at a genetic level I’m not sure, but I’ve certainly been bitten by the same bug – though I sometimes hate myself for it. Unfortunately this tendency is also allied to another of my failings, which is a complete inability to grasp the fact that there are some things I simply cannot do properly. The very best example of this was undoubtedly the camper van I decided to create some years ago. Why I even wanted a camper van is now beyond me, and I certainly could not have afforded to buy one. But in any case that wasn’t the point. I didn’t ‘want’ to buy one, I wanted to construct a camper van of my own invention. I built it on the back of a rather ancient pick-up truck that I bought for a song. It consumed acres of timber, huge quantities of aluminium tubing and was covered with the sort of plastic cladding designed for porches. When it was finished everyone (I suspect rather too politely) complimented me on my achievement – though to me it always looked exactly like a pretentious mobile garden shed.
Did I come to my senses and finally settle for a moderate and sensible life? Most definitely not! I’ve lost count of the things I’ve suddenly and mysteriously decided to do – and all without the slightest idea about what I was taking on. Perhaps fortunately for me the internet has come to my aid in recent years. There is now virtually nothing one can undertake that isn’t dealt with on line, and usually in great detail.
As a rule, when I’ve attempted something once, I never try again, generally for quite obvious reasons. But this time I am determined to create something of great beauty and also usefulness. The Mark II banjo has been commenced.
This time I have bought the factory made parts I need and even more importantly I have enlisted the support of my step son in law. (Free advert here for Darren Flintoff, bespoke cabinet maker). A friend who visited yesterday looked at the list of things I’ve already bought and still have to buy and I thought rather unkindly pointed out that I could probably buy two factory made banjos for the price. In my saner moments I can’t deny that he is quite right but for once I want to look admiringly at something I have produced myself (apart from the bits Darren is making and the ones made in a factory – which let’s face it is most of it) and be proud to show it to others.
In the end everything comes down to the words of the Immortal Bard – who as far as we know did not take on stupid projects and was absolutely superb at what he chose to do. His observation echoes through my mind every time I file down a segment of mother of pearl or saw the next piece of wood. “Vanity, vanity; all is vanity”.
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