“Back in my day……” Nope that won’t work, I’m not old enough to use that line…. “Once upon a time……” Not writing a fairy tale here, so that’s out…. “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….” WHAT THE?

 

I remember sitting on my Fafa’s workbench, which now sits in my own workshop, as a young fella, watching him work away either building a new project, repairing something or sharpening a tool that would inevitably be used in his massive veggie garden. He could seemingly do it all. Nan used to bake, and bake, and bake, and bake. She’s possibly to blame for my love of anything sweet (her vegetable crisper was actually a chocolate crisper). She was also a knitter, we always had new jumpers to wear. Grandad was a “tinkerer”, Mum remembers helping him pull stuff apart, occasionally it went back together! Mum was always cooking and knitting, while my Dad has been my biggest influence. He could make anything, fix everything, calmly and logically.

 

 Everything was home made, or home grown.

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Every town used to have a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. And a blacksmith, tailor, seamstress, leadlighter, felter, miller, sawyer, and the list goes on.

 

The skills have been “replaced”. Or have been centralised as “progress” has happened. 

 

And the world has become poorer for it.

 

The COVID19 pandemic, and the resulting shut down, resulted in people spending more time at home. They had more spare time than they’d ever really experienced. And they got sick of social media. 

 

I believe people realised that work isn’t the reason for existing. That they should be working to live, not living to work. 

 

We need hobbies, we want to “do stuff”, we want to learn new skills. We want to create, to build, to experience new things.

 

Here at Mon Repos Narrandera we want to help people with that. We want to find people that are passionate about a particular area, and host them in our workspace so that they can share their skills with others. We want people passing on their knowledge so that others can learn. We want to foster a community of people that can learn from each other.

 

And so begins our journey into the “Grandfather Trades”.....