Hey Blog! This post seems to have unexpectedly linked with last week’s – it’s also about cotton, but this time I’m introducing the mills in which it was spun!

Cotton is a plant. The seeds exude a white, fluffy substance which is the cotton. This can be picked, baled, and shipped to the mill. In the mill, it goes through a long line of conveyor belts and noisy machines, and comes out the other end as nice clean cotton thread. After another journey and an even noisier loom, you get a roll of cloth, and that fabric can be made into anything. Most people don’t think much more than that – it’s all done automatically in a factory nowadays, right? Well, yes; but in the 1700s when Sir Arkwright was doing his business, no. He and some other entrepreneurs built several mills along the Derwent Valley, which now form the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site – as seen in the last week’s post, this is one of the supporters of the poetry session.

One of those mills is known as Masson Mills, and is Arkwright’s show mill, different to the others – if you have seen them – as Masson is the only one to be built entirely of red brick (brick was more expensive than stone, so it was used to show off). It used to run on water power, from the river Derwent at the back door, but later it was made to run on steam power – another status symbol! The process was to transform bales of rough lumpy cotton into fine, thin threads. First, you put the cotton into a large turning machine nicknamed “the devil”. It had a lot of large iron teeth, and losing limbs in it was not unheard of. This split the cotton into small bits. The next stage was the shredder, which combed it finer, and then the carder. This would make the cotton into thin, wispy strands, which were rolled up around a drum and put into the next part of the process. The frame of drums and spinning rollers both stretched and spun the strands into thread, which was sent to the weavers. All that under one roof. The noise must have been deafening – no soft whirring, but clank-clank-clank of chains and cogs. For 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, every week, from age 9. Not exactly the most pleasant work, but it made a lot of money for the factory owners, whereas the pay was only a few shillings a week for the workers. After the thread had been made, it was taken to a weaving shed. Here, with a lot of even noisier clanking, and a flying shuttle, it makes cloth. Which you could do from age 6…

Masson Mills has both weaving and spinning in it, but originally it only had the spinning stage. The machines are very large – one is 70ft. long! The building is powered by hydroelectricity from the river, so after all these years waterpower is coming back (maybe in a different design, but still renewable!). Since it shut last century, it has been turned into a visitor centre, and makes string for the shop upstairs. We bought a ball of this – it’s very nice. Many of the machines can still be run, even if they don’t do things commercially any more. For the real experience you need to see the mill (I don’t want to put the tour guides out of a job), and it’s well worth a visit!

Hey Blog! Last Saturday I went into Derby to take part in a unique writing opportunity I’m thrilled to share with you!

The workshop was run by the Standing in this Place team, in association with the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage site and Legacy Makers, from Nottingham. Standing in this Place is a group highlighting historical comparisons between black enslaved women in the Americas and white mill-worker women in this country. Noting that less than 5% of statues in this country show non-royal women, the final product of the partnership is to erect a statue of one of each of these two groups of women, showing new connections between the two sides of history. Another aspect of the programme is to use young people’s creative writing talent on a podcast – and for this they ran a workshop. Through Mum’s intricate net of spies and contacts, we already knew one of the organisers of the workshop – she has helped out the Watch Group in the past when we need a poetry session – and she offered me a place. I accepted, and took part!

To start with, only four people attended. Too bad for the five others who dropped out. However, this was good as it meant we each had a chance to write, read our own and listen to other’s poems, which is infinitely better than rushing to write and hardly hearing anyone else. There were two separate sessions, run by different people, and in both the quality was fantastic – but I could hold my own and write equally well, just in a different (that is, MY) style. I said as I came in, “If I get the right inspiration, it’ll be amazing – but I can’t do anything without the inspiration,” to which one of the workshop leaders replied he was there to provide that inspiration. Consequently I wrote very well!

First, we met each other in one of the upstairs rooms, to get to know who each other was (I happened to be the youngest person in the room, but no problem!), and then went around the Standing in this Place exhibition. Here we saw the design for the final statue, which worked its way into all the poems, and after tea and biscuits we had the first session, with Tamika Steadman. To start with, we each wrote a word or two which described the sculpture to us. Then we explained why we had chosen that word. Next, we tried to incorporate a few of these words into a piece of writing. All of us either wrote a poem or poetic prose, all of which were brilliant. After reading them out, we had another short tea break and then went on to the other session, led by Quinton Green. This one was started with a quick-write based on prompts from a large prompt book. I wrote another poem at this stage. Everyone’s first four lines were then transformed into a chant – interspersed with question words and repeated lines.

A note here on prompt books and ‘inspiration’ – this is something I might need – if inspiration strikes suddenly, the best thing is to write it quickly in a little book and come back to it later. If you read Winnie-the-Pooh, you’ll understand! (As an aside, I have a friend who came up with the concept of ‘thought-men’, who run through the computer-like mind; and while writing this I had a vision of something like a little cupid who shoots arrows of inspiration – perhaps these are the same thing!) I am also a firm believer that you do not write because someone tells you to or to make money – you write because you have an idea and to let it go would be a waste. If you have to write ‘on command’ your work will be dull, boring and generally not worth reading. This is why I said in a previous paragraph you need to wait for the ‘inspiration’!

You might have noticed that I haven’t included the poems I wrote. Well, there are a few reasons for this. One reason is that the poem is fairly long, but you may get to hear it – for another is that, as I have told you, there is a podcast on which the poems will be performed, and I plan to send mine in. If and when I get news that they plan to air mine, I will add a link to the podcast on this blog. Keep checking it out!

Hey Blog! On Tuesday I took a day off normal studies and instead went to help with the harvest at our local vineyard!

The Amber Valley Vinyard is a very nice place – we hadn’t even heard of it till a couple of years ago, which is surprising for someone whose family drinks a fair bit (that is, my parents, combined – I have a taster now and again!); but it is more than a vineyard. It has a large collection of local apple tree varieties, from which they make cider; a large field of grapes, from which they make wine, and markets a few times a year. We have been there twice before: once for a market last year and once for the wassailing January this. I wrote about the wassailing on Home Ed in a Shed, for more look for “Here we come a-wassailing”, Jan 23.

Recently, we found out that there was going to be a day when they were inviting volunteers to come and pick grapes. Mum voluntold us we were going, so we did! Dad even got the day off to come, as this was too good an experience to miss! It’s rather enjoyable – the only downside is the wasps. Apparently, the vineyard lost ⅕ – ¼ of the crop this year to wasps; these grapes go brown, shrivelled, and have a hole in the side. I counted a maximum of 17 wasps on one bunch of grapes, at one point, and although most of the bunches on one side of the field were only mildly affected, the other side had barely any whole undamaged grapes left! Unfortunately I have an online science class which isn’t recorded on Tuesday afternoons, so I had to skip part of the grape-picking to come home for an hour. Still, the day was very fun, and in the end the group managed to pick about a ton of grapes, which will make a lot of wine! I don’t think we’ll get quite as much from our own vines, which my big brother gave Dad a few years ago, but we got some useful tips on pruning them! We also bought a bottle of a previous batch, so we can test out what it will likely taste like. I hope to continue to visit – I know it’s still 4½ years till I can have a taster there, but it’s enjoyable to participate in this kind of thing. And who knows, maybe we’ll get to the next lot of grape picking in a couple of weeks’ time!

Hey Blog! This is an update post on the very thing which names this blog – the Shed!

Readers of the ‘About me and my shed’ page will remember that the shed was built in autumn 2020, and looking at the original picture on the home page, it showed a shed with a door, a window (there is actually another window on the side, you can’t see it in the photo), dense holly tree behind and a latch on the door. Well, it’s changed a bit now; the latch fell off, the paint wore away, the tree has been trimmed as the council have a stupid rule saying you can complain if a hedge is over 5 ft, and to cut a long story short the hedge was shortened extensively. I, on the other hand, have not shrunk but grown, and as I did it was the shed that seemed to shrink. As a result, the shed got too small for me to comfortably stand up in, and I kept knocking my head on the beams that held the roof up. The felt on the roof that kept it waterproof also began to fail, and one of the roof panels went rotten, and sagged.

For half a year the shed has been in want of mild repair, but last weekend we went out to re-felt and paint it. Once we had taken the roof off, to replace the panel, we realised there’s no time like the present and increased the job by adding an upwards extension. It is now almost Dad’s height (6’5’’) and I can happily stand up in it. Hopefully I will not need another roof raise any time soon!

Luckily, we had enough and of the right length pieces of wood. Now and again, Dad brings a pallet home and we dismantle it, build something, and the rest goes in the log store. There are a few pieces as long as the shed, which are very useful for nailing the felt on, and we knocked out a few panels and replaced them to tie the new bit in. Instead of raising the roof the whole way round, we decided to just raise the front. Originally, it was like an Orkadian standing stone – that is, straight up on the sides with a slanting roof down at the front. We have now reversed this – the down is at the back and the front is higher. With the roof increase of more than a foot, we have put in another window at the top, and this is now in place with hinges fitted.

The most fun bit of the job was probably where we had to use the ladder to put the roof in place, and the worst was putting the nails in on one end, as at that point there is one very slippery railway sleeper’s width between the shed wall and a foot drop past that – neither of us could reach from that far down, and for a 5’10’’ boy and his 6’5’’ Dad that’s not a common occurrence! When we made the shed the first time, we made each wall separately and nailed them together – so it was easier. Dad even said “you don’t often hear me say this, but I’m a bit too short for this job”!

It’s rather nice inside there, and though in winter I might not use it in the same way, I am looking forward to enjoying myself in a taller, lighter and (hopefully!!!!) tidier shed!

Hey Blog! Today and last Friday, I went out on two rather special cycling rides, so today I’ll tell you about them!

Bikeability is a programme run around the UK, training young people to get on their bike and go cycling. There are three stages, 1, 2, & 3. The programme is often done through schools, but as I have never been to school, this was not an option. Recently, however, Mum proposed and orchestrated communications with the local cycling society CycleDerby, so five of us have done stage 1, and of those, three have done stage 2. Both sessions were led by a cycling instructor who happens to be another parent at my Scout troop, but the second had a co-leader as to cycle on the road, which level two requires, you need two instructors.

Stage one is the basics. Stopping, starting, hands off the handlebars (one at a time!) and looking behind. Riding without traffic is OK after stage 1, as you and your bike should all be ready. As proved today, if you know what you need to do to check your equipment and your bike, you can be ready to jump on your bike in 11 seconds, if no adjustments are needed. If adjustments are needed, it will of course take a little longer. The simple ABCD check will work – Air in the tyres, Brakes working, Chain running smoothly, Direction of the handlebars perpendicular with the front wheel. You should also make yourself ready for cycling by – but if I continue, I’d be putting the business out of a job! We all passed level one with flying colours, and a week later were ready for stage two.

Stage two is much more advanced, and I think is put together like Lego bricks. Instead of doing an entire cycle ride, it’s blocks like cycling on main roads, and passing a parked car, then moving a little further up the road and doing left turn in, left turn out, then right turn out, right turn in, and doing U-turns. There’s no substitute for this. You have to put your bike on the road, pick your timings, and be assertive. I would compare it to doing my level three sailing session, as after that level you can go out on your own in a boat – but you need practice and need to think in advance rather than just set off, and I have now passed that mark with cycling. Now I just need to build more confidence ready for level three!

Stage three is being considered; it was not immediately proposed by Mum when she initiated correspondence, but now we have done the first two levels all three of us want to continue. This level would be a journey, most likely going from one house to another on the bikes. It’s not arranged, but in the meantime, I can go out and cycle in the local area. The one pity is our house is on the side of a hill!

Hey Blog! This week I’m going to tell you all about a game I’ve played this year!

What’s an insect’s favourite game? Well, yes, of course, Cricket. It’s played with two long flat willow bats (one for each batsman), one leather-wrapped oak ball, a set of six stumps & four bails, and (professionally) 11 players. I was playing at four in the Caribbean, and am still playing now (albeit with much heavier equipment and a straighter aim!). Most of what I have done is ‘pairs’ cricket – I know what you’re thinking “11 isn’t even, you can’t have pairs” – this version is for slightly younger players and is so everyone has an equal time at the bat. Most people would think that batting is the most fun – and generally it is – but there’s something kind of scarry about just standing there when a rather heavy ball is coming rather fast thought the air! I like bowling the best, probably; I took three wickets in a match one time, but I still need to practice!

I mentioned wickets – what are they? Well, the aim of the game is to score the most points – runs, they are called – and to gain them the batsmen run between the two sets of three stumps. When the two batsmen have swapped stumps, that’s one run. If the batsman hits the ball for a certain distance, more runs are counted (four if the ball bounces and then passes the boundary, six if it goes over the boundary without touching the floor) but if any fielder catches the ball before it’s bounced, that batsman is out. ‘Out’ in professional cricket means that batsman leaves the field and faces no more balls; this could be first ball or 100^th ball – in pairs, the batsmen face a standard number of balls whether they get out or not, and a wicket counts for -5 runs. There are three main ways of getting out – either caught out, as described before, run out (see below) or bowled out, by the bowler managing to make the batsman miss the ball and get the ball to hit the stumps, or the wicket. This knocks the bails off, and the man is out. Bowling someone out generally produces the cricketers’ cry of “‘owzat!” (how’s that!) and the umpires (like refferees) signal whether the man is out or not.

There are two main types of bowling, spin bowling and pace bowling (fast bowling). Spin is where the ball spins in the air, bounces, and curves in towards the stumps while the batsman is expecting it to go somewhere else. Pace, or fast, is where the ball comes straight from the bowler’s hand very fast to the stumps. This is my preferred type, mostly because my spin is atrocious! You have to keep your arm straight while bowling, as all your arm needs to do is go round like a windmill and release your grip at the top, near your ear. This is very different to a throw, as with a throw, your elbow is bent – throws are only needed to get the ball back to the wicket keeper (the special fielder who stands behind the wickets) for him to knock the bails off to run out the batsman, or stump him.

I just touched on fielding positions – there are a whole load of quite amusingly named positions for the fanatics of the game, but all you need to know for basics is there is an inner ring, a midfield, and an outer ring, as well as the wicket keeper and bowler. The two batsmen, one facing and one off, are at the stumps, and all the viewers are on the side.

I like playing, it’s at team game, it gives lots of opportunities for skills and most of all it’s a fun sport. Next year I will continue, probably in the under 15s team. And I’ve even practiced teaching it to my cousin – we bought him a set when we went to a family gathering recently and had a play in the garden. It’s lucky I didn’t break any windows!

Hey Blog! This week is all about another local attraction, and another restoration project!

Heage Windmill is a rather special place. It is our local windmill, and the only working six-sailed stone tower windmill in the UK. It was built in the 1790s, so is nearly a quarter of a millennium old. Even though it has stood that long, it does still need repairs from time to time – and this is one such time! The rotatable cap has been temporally removed, and the sails have come off, and the society is in the process of making it good as new. Naturally, this needs volunteers, so we went along at the weekend to help!

Each windmill sail is made of wood and tough canvas, is painted white and weighs about a ton. The cap is more wood and more canvas, layered on top of each other, is on rollers so it can turn around the top of the tower, and is attached to the fantail which turns it to always face the wind. The cap is left for the professionals, who are going to coat it in some special stuff so it doesn’t get so bad. The fantail is already done. However, we were allowed to make a start on sanding the sails, which was very nice. If you remember from one of my first posts this year, I hand sanded the top of The Box, which took a long time and some aching arms, until Dad lent me the power sander. Unfortunately, there’s no sockets to plug it in at the windmill, so we had to do it all by hand.

We didn’t have to sand the canvas, but all the wood – and we only did the top and part on the sides of one sail! When you think there’s a whole morning’s work in sanding half a sail, then double it, add another morning for pressure-washing, and another for painting, times that by six, and you’ll see how much the people there are determined to make it go again. It looks really good when it’s all together, with a grey tower and a sparkling white cap. When the sails are stopped, the sail we were working on is one of the two horizontal ones – so when we go up the hill and look, we can proudly say “I helped repair one of those two there!”. The whole machinery inside is fantastic, and the mechanisms by which they all work is more than I can think of! How the original constructors could have thought up all these, then condensed them, and them made all of them fit together in a 15-foot diameter four-floor tower is beyond me!

This weekend, I have been doing some other stuff with other sails – moving about on the lake! At least, once the wind picked up! These sails work on slightly different procedure, for sailboats have only one triangular sail and it’s like an open sided bag. The windmill sails are more like wind turbine blades – they are slatted and have a taper to make the wind push them sideways rather than allowing for filling and escape of wind, and they have no dagger-/centre-board like boats have. Still, they both rely on the wind and it’s an interesting comparison!

Hey Blog! In this post I will elaborate on the hint I gave you yesterday – this post is all about Aqueduct Cottage on the Cromford Canal.

The cottage is a lockkeeper’s cottage, and is rather old – it was built around two hundred years ago by the Nightingale family, when they added an arm on the Cromford canal to take materials from the mills up the valley down to the main canal. If you were thinking, “Nightingale? Like Florence?” then you would be absolutely right. It’s the same family – apparently Florence Nightingale was friends with at least one generation of inhabitants! Little Grey Rabbit author Alison Uttley also knew it, but all that was about a hundred years ago – the last tenant left in the ’70s and the cottage later fell into total disrepair. Now, however, a team of volunteers from the Wildlife Trust are renovating it to its former state. They seem to have done a very good job – from 2016 when there was no roof, trees were growing through the walls, and the floor was buried a foot deep, there is now a tidy clean cottage with a fully built roof. They’ve practically built it from nothing – just a few bits of the walls were already there!

We were meeting friends there, and Mum wanted to talk to the restorers, so she could run a Wildlife Watch session there, but since Dad had taken the car and it was a long way to walk, we cycled! I need to do some more cycling, a) because it’s fun and gets you where you want to be faster than walking, b) if on the flat or downhill with less effort (lucky the canal is almost spirit-level flat!), and c) because Dad wants to cycle Land’s End to John O’Groats and for that I need lots more practice! The longest bit of the journey was getting the bikes out of the garage and straightening the handlebars (to put them away, Dad usually moves bits of them so they fit), but once on the towpath we could go quite fast!

The history of the cottage is very interesting. Originally, it was a square plan one roomed layout. It was then extended to make two semidetached cottages, and then knocked through to make one big one. There was also a very small walled garden out the back, which the renovators only learned about after a former resident told them about it! We didn’t see that bit, but inside upstairs are diagrams and old photos of the cottage and people that lived in it. As I have said, the cottage is owned by the Wildlife Trust. It is situated in Lea Wood, a lovely wood with a lot of different habitat and wildlife. The fact that the old canal runs along the bottom means that there is a lovely blend of history and nature – just like me! I think it’s most definitely worth a visit if you live nearby.

Hey Blog! This week I’ll tell you about the baking I’ve been doing!

 We have been watching the Great British Bake Off recently. This is a very entertaining show – both serious and downright silly. I have mentioned it before, so look through back issues for more on this program. Either way, we are still moving through the episodes, which continues to inspire me to bake. This is good as it means we have pudding!

I have made two cakes in the past month. The first was a loaf-like cake and had cherries and other fruit in it – I needed to read the recipe a bit better, as it said “roll the cherries in flour first” (this stops them sinking to the bottom of the cake) and I just put them straight in – resulting in a slightly soggy bottom but a delicious cake! I think if it was judged on Bake Off standard, I would get “flavours are perfect, texture is good, but you need to get a more even distribution of filling”.  Unfortunately, in our house we have to stop ourselves eating the entire thing at one sitting – otherwise there’s no cake left for tomorrow!

The second was a round and flatter cake, flavours blackberry and apple. This too was good, though perhaps not quite as elegant, but still tasted great! I hope to do even more baking of both the savoury and sweet kind soon – probably mostly puddings!

This is rather a short blog post as I have another, longer one coming tomorrow, all about my visit to a beautiful old cottage on the Cromford Canal.

Hey Blog! On Thursday I attended a workshop trying something I’d never thought much about before – making natural pigments!

If you are a regular reader, you will know I am very interested in history and prehistory, and I am currently doing an Arts Award on the subject of prehistoric art. The ancient peoples knew the colour properties of the different rocks and soils, which is most evident in the cave art, but it is highly likely they used pigment in other ways too – for example as decoration or magic marks. Either way, they knew how to use it to make good art – which to my mind has in some ways never been surpassed! The variety of colours able to be made is remarkable, and though today’s synthetic acrylic paint makes brightly coloured paintings, ancient techniques create more sustainable, subtle, and infinitely more mysterious pictures. The most known ones are the ochres, browny-red-to-yellow pigments that were used by cultures from thousands of years ago to the present day; we used some examples of these in the workshop. I know I said natural colours are more muted tones, but even so it’s surprising at first quite how bright the colours produced are – sandstone produced a vibrant red and ash created hole-dark black! It’s quite intriguing how many different things contain pigment – unassuming soil, pieces of cliff, slate, even brick!

The process for making almost any paint is rather simple, but refining it is a bit more tricky. You start by grinding up your chosen pigment, with or without a little bit of water, in a pestle-and-mortar (NOT Mum’s one kept for spices!) and reducing it to a powder. You can use it at that stage if necessary, but it will be lumpy and full of grit – not ideal for paint! To make it better, you can levigate it – no, not levitate, but levigate, a way to separate the finer granules from the thicker granules, in which your ground-down pigment is swirled around in a jar of water and the heavier sediment sinks while the lighter pigment sits on top. This is also a good way to remove sticks and roots that have got in by accident! Once the water on top is clear, it can be poured out carefully and then the jar is swilled again, more gently, and the pigment comes out. When the pigment is tipped into a tray and allowed to dry, it can then be brought to the next stage.

Here, you have another choice. You can mull the paint, or can use it as it is – as it is will result in gritty stuff, but less gritty than the straight-ground. Mulling will make a smooth paint, as the pigment is once more rubbed and powdered, but in this process a binder is added – whether your paint is a watercolour or oil will depend on this stage. Oil paint is just that – oil is added as you mull it and the paint can then be used – but watercolour, which we tried, has a mainly water binder with a little other stuff added. To mull, you use a very heavy and smooth weight on a glass chopping board or similar – we used an old iron iron, which nearly stuck several times, but was very effective – the paint created was fine as any watercolour I’ve seen, and in some ways even better!

The person running the workshop told us there were many materials that could be found locally that would yield pigments, so in the future I will be most likely making my own paint – and painting my own pictures! This will mean I can almost create every element needed for painting – just the brush to go. Hmmmm, I wonder?!