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SUMMER 2004 A lot of sweat has dripped... ...since the last newsletter. Happily, most of it from my helpers - thanks: Colin, Stuart, John, Nick, Mike and all the other occasional contributors. Wood’s been bought and cut. Brian’s been under the knife and currently has to have a dodgy valve looked at. It came as a shock as nobody knew he had a heart. The year is going well - sure sign something major will break and wipe out the profit. Up till recently the plan has to find wood , stack and sell it. The current cunning one is to stack it better and make the whole place look a smidge more professional. Fear not faithful followers, there is very little chance of it happening. Like all big successful companies... ... we have different levels of trade. Level I for us -‘quiet’. This means no orders at all which rather suits me as I can just pose in the Landrover and drive around the woods as a country land owner. Brian prefers Level II which is ‘steady’. This means one order a week and saves him mixing up the bits of paper. Level III is ‘busy’. This means 1 to 3 orders a week. We can cope but neither of us like parcelling stuff up so it can be a bit of a pain. Finally there is Level IV – Frantic. More than 3 orders and the only person who likes that is the accountant brother who banks the cheques. Banking five or six cheques isn’t too much harder than a couple. Shifting an extra couple of hundred kilos of hardwoods causes the odd crack in the smoothly run machine. When we make the odd cock up, you know we are running at more than Level I, which has been most of this year. So, whereas in the past when it snowed we sat by the fire. This year it was all hands (well Brian’s frozen ones ) to the saw.
The woman who runs the Post Office... ... at St Mary Bourne just doesn’t like us. It’s probably the parcels but could be Brians’ personality! They built a new little village store a couple of years ago and the Post Office is part of that. Before that a chap called Bill had the Post Office in his garage. He didn’t mind the parcels, I think he liked watching the Posties struggle to pick them up. In those days they were 30kgs- a bit heavy , but now the maximum is 20kgs and whilst you wouldn’t want to drop them on your foot, you don’t burst a blood vessel moving them. What began with surly unhelpfulness from this woman, progressed to being obstructive. It came to a head... ... when dropping off a parcel Northern Ireland bound. Brian had taken it in and when it was back at The Kiln the next day Brian explained that she had tried to charge him £35 for Europe rates instead of the UK £11.So I went to see her, she refused to believe Northern Ireland was part of the UK . In fact she went as far to say it had changed, when I asked if Mr Blair and the Queen knew about this she got the hump and said she wasn’t going to discuss it further. She did say she had had just about enough of Brian’s attitude and was going to phone the area manager. We try and go to Hurstbourne Tarrant Post Office when possible, they are exceedingly pleasant and helpful, it’s just not a challenge getting them to take the parcels! On the subject of delivering, higher costs have led to more people visiting. This really does suit us and offers better value. Current couriers TNT are dynamite, very friendly and if they were about 25% cheaper would be ideal. As a post script to this which was written before Christmas relations at St MB Post Office have improved to polite with an occasional thin smile and you can’t ask much more than that. November ticked by quite nicely... ... tidying up loose ends and a few trunks that had sat on the ground too long. We also went to look at another potentially large supply of Oak and a bit further afield the first good Walnut we have seen for a couple of years. More about that later. As always happens when you get ahead a set back comes… Brian got rushed to hospital in early December. He had been suffering bad guts off and on and various tests hadn’t pinpointed the cause. A few days in Winchester General led to the diagnosis of a dodgy Gall bladder and a recommendation of surgery. By this time the strong pain killers had kicked in and the old bugger was feeling better and bored. After selling a bit of wood to the other patients he began directing operations from his bed. Brian’s been on the phone again... ... was a twice daily report from the wife. When I called in the blacksmith at 7.30 am and said he was getting knifed the next day, Len said I know, he’s already been on the phone this morning. The day of the Op came and he was gowned and ready to rock. Half an hour after he should have been done the surgeon came in to say the knife was blunt or they had run out of operating time and could he come back next week. Many expletives later including “ the f*%$£g Queen ( who had her knee done that week) didn’t get her f8*&^%$g operation cancelled” he was home and back out and about until he could be fitted in again. So, in the week before he went under the knife... ... we thought we’d better go and lug back some of the Walnut from Itchen Abbas. We borrowed the blacksmiths big trailer and handily Glen, one of our best customers called by for wood and we persuaded him to come and help. It’s a big Walnut tree cut into 3 and 4 foot lumps half way down a big back garden of a very big house. Brian had had a rummage at the blacksmiths and found an old trolley with a metal frame and pneumatic tyres. It worked very well and what we thought would be a nightmare was merely a bit of a bugger. I paid a decent price for it as it has a lot of dark wood. Retail price will have to be £30 a cu ft to allow a modest profit but I hope when dry it will be worth it. Brian said goodbye to his gall bladder... ... and I allowed him the Christmas week to recover before getting him back in action early January. A bit of a rush customer wise, meant the first part of the month engaged in the permanent struggle of converting what we have into what someone needs without too much wastage. The saw had spent Christmas at the Blacksmith for a couple of urgent repairs and modifications, so we were pleased to see it back in action. With Brian back in full flow January turned into one of our best yet saleswise. Of course, as soon as it flies off to its new home we panic about lack of stock. It is a pain that what takes minutes to load into a car takes months to find, lug to the woods and saw, then there’s the seasoning time. The answer is more wood. Having the answer doesn’t always help! We can’t just get another juggernaut in like Tesco and refill the shelves. When there’s only one geezer part time, admittedly with great help from Brian and others, the time bit is the problem. The potential source of Oak... ...in a decent quantity mentioned earlier was ready for collection in February. Gordon was booked to come and collect in one hit with his big trailer. Small snag, Dave the tree surgeon, who would otherwise sell it for logs wanted exactly twice as much as I wanted to pay. His fairly sound reasoning was, that chopped for logs he could make his price. Mine was more basic- I didn’t have that much cash.
Brian felt we should walk away, we can pick the odd tree up much cheaper and stick with our current suppliers. I decided to meet Dave armed with a smaller bundle of £20 notes than he would have liked. We hammered out a deal which left him happy and us with some good Oak and a promise of more in the future. We soon planked and stacked that... ... and found time in March to get the rest of the Walnut and some interesting Beech from Itchen Abbas as well an excellent Walnut tree a mile up the road from The Kiln. Brian showed again what a handy geezer he is, as it was through him we got the tree and for a decent price. Chris the owner was happy to let it go to a good home and came with us to the sawmill to watch it being planked. They are the first 6’ walnut planks I have had. I’ll need a good offer to part with them. In the same month Brian also found us a decent Ash, three Oaks through Mark McClay and sold enough wood to enable me to pay for it. He did a particularly good bit of business with some wide Ash slabs from Gordon that will be the bar tops in the renovated Coronation Arms in St Mary Bourne – good place for lunch on a trip down. A strong wind brought down a big old Sycamore behind the blacksmiths in St Mary Bourne. An annoying portion was rotten but there was enough good wood to make it worth while spending a morning with Big Mike topping it out for the owner in exchange for the timber. Big Mike turned 70 in March... ... much to his disgust. We’re hoping he will keep going as long as Old Harold who is still out and about at 83 and came along when we tidied up the Sycamore. Spring sprung as it does and before we knew it Easter had come and gone. More work on the wood sheds is on the agenda for the summer. Next time a bit about John the quality control man and how Chris West , our man in the south became part of the sex industry.
May 2004 ………..next
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