Having been brought up on a farm I have always enjoyed playing with animals, particularly dogs, and building things with Lego and Meccano. I was forever taking things apart and making things, and at the age of 9 or ten, I started taking an interest in wood. I was on the way to building bigger things.

Dad had an oily farm workshop, set up for mechanics and metalwork, but it did have some wood, and a few woodworking tools. I managed to dig out what I could find, and start to practice joints that I had seen in books. Mum took me into town where I would get lost in the library hunting out woodworking books. Finally when I moved into senior school at the age of eleven, I started woodwork. I picked things up quickly, and it seems I was in my element. My parents bought old bed headboards made in solid mahogany, oak and walnut, for me to cut up and play with. Dad got an old lathe going and bought a few tools from time to time. My free time was spent in Dads workshop, now up to your knees in shavings. Tools and machines were occasionally used as carrots during important exams within my education. At the end of it, I had qualifications, and a couple of useful machines. We were very lucky on the farm as Dad was able to let me have the use of a cold, but dry shed to set up a workshop. What more could you ask for, I could build stuff, bigger stuff. I continued to learn about wood, its properties and what to do with it through school, college until I found myself making furniture for a living, mostly four poster beds these days.

I was once called sad for not having any interests or hobbies, for not watching or being able to discuss the big match with my mates. My idea of a few days off, was getting in the workshop and making some furniture for me. When you analyse things, I am one of the fortunate few who managed to find their talent at an early age, develop it, and turn it into a living. Having recently read a section in a management book, part of an employers job is to find the talents of their employees and encourage them to their full potential, creating a happy work force, that loves doing what they do best.

So if you are a parent, with a kid who loves to fiddle with things, take things apart, then rebuild them, please encourage them, buy them more, it need not be expensive, just look on ebay. If youre a teacher or employer, its part of your job to find an individuals talent, because its so easy to teach people who want to learn, its just a question of finding out where their talents lies. There is nothing like doing something you love doing, because its not a job, its your life, its easy. And once you have found your talent, all you have to do is find a way of making money at it (which is not always as easy). The people that are the best in their field love their work, because its not work.

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