A Royal Invitation

I bought a suit recently. No, it's not denim, although had I had time I might have considered one being made to fit. Finding a tailor to make it might be a different matter, not an easy one. Suits are not generally my world. In fact, where I go, I rarely ever see one. The tailor helping me helped me incredibly well, and that's just as well. I didn't know what I was doing. He asked me what the occasion was, and I mentioned Buckingham Palace, a King's command to the Lord Chamberlain that he send me the invitation and, well, I needed a new suit to match the occasion and then have some function for me longer term into the future, perhaps a wedding or other key event and such.

There were a few changes needed to tweak the final cut and stitch to a perfected but more leisurely fit; trimming one part to the dovetail, you might say. These final fits are usually supremely minor, the results, an uncompromised fit along with a better look. I'm in the hands of an expert, nothing will be lost. Dovetailing unites the components, a few pins here, a tuck there, things get tightened. Yes, this week, if all goes well, I should be at the Garden Party in Buckingham Palace; it's to recognise my long-term work as an influencer in education and skills using the hand tools I encourage others to use and master. How about that!

I may well be a fish out of water, but I began looking forward to the day and the day out in London a week or so ago. The event is large scale, a few thousand individuals. I don't do too well in crowds and crowded places, but it'll be fine. The train from Oxford takes an hour. A taxi is not too far from the Palace, but we'll see what's best for this special occasion. Apparently, this event will go ahead come rain or shine. so, I also bought a large umbrella with a hooped handle and can use it as a walking stick too.

King Charles is well known for his support of traditional crafts as well as charitable developments in many fields of crafts, structured teaching and training through artisans like myself.

I draw a comparison between my designing and working on the two cabinets for the Cabinet Room of the White House in 2009 and my invitation to Buckingham Palace as two seismic events in my life. On the one hand, the cabinet pieces for the White House marked the closing of an era, my life (autobiography in the processing right now) living and working in the USA for 23 years, my teaching in the mid-part of my US life, when I started teaching woodworking more than my actual making furniture and then my return to live and work in Britain. My online teaching began here in the UK when I ended my US residency. One led to the other, you see. My shift to hosting classes in Europe and then too my online teaching and training began in 2010. This then gave me the large-scale audience I knew would be essential if I were to turn the tide in my quest to open doors for people to learn the art of real hand tool woodworking. The whole experience that started in the USA and with my return to England is the reason for my recognition at Buckingham Palace and comes from my working on two continents. There's a scriptural Old Testament proverb I at one time wondered about that says, "Do you see a man skilled in his work? Behold, he will stand before kings..." Imagine!

Time has moved on since my apprenticeship days, following my headmaster's comment to my parents that precipitated my becoming a manual worker. That's sixty years ago now. And then my own first apprentice of sorts, which was one of my brothers. That was back around the later 1970s. He'd been a welder for 15 years and wanted a change. After working with me, he went on his own and continued in small-scale joinery and house maintenance until he retired well into his mid-70s. Since then, I have trained around 6,500 students through the hands-on classes I designed and developed to defy the status quo. That's been in both the USA and the UK, but then many a hundred thousand have now followed me over the last decade and a half in my online work, along with three decades of writing for magazines, my books and how-tos, blogging and so on. Who'd have thought it!

I suppose I am saying it's one thing designing and crafting individual pieces throughout my six decades as a maker-designer, but factoring in making in tandem with teaching and training took me to new heights as I plumbed the depths of possibilities in this new era we now call online. My life has indeed been enriched beyond measure to give me both purpose and fulfilment through my making and, additionally, and unexpectedly, my teaching and training others. Imagine, 30 years training a generation of new-genre woodworkers the art of hand tool woodworking on a global scale. At one time, that would have been the responsibility of crafting artisans at a very local level, but today's so-called 'professional' makers are the least likely to ever be the ones to do that any more. I'm constantly being told by professionals that their life is about making money and not smelling the roses. Colleges took over and, well, that really marked the beginning and the end of the quality apprenticing that came from craftsman to apprentice by face-to-face mentoring with true craftsmen. (Oh, George. You'll be in your 90s now, or even older.) College training would not be through a mentoring maker, but someone who ticked boxes deemed the right ones by a college administrator earning a £150,000. Not a creative bone anywhere to be seen, I'm afraid.

So my initial contact came a few weeks ago now, a government department asked if going to a garden party at Buckingham Palace might be something I would be interested in doing. What can I say?

Three weeks later, I received a very nice and formal invitation from the Lord Chamberlain's office. I bought a nice tie (required) to go with my suit. I'm still convinced that a denim suit in the right denim could be nicely put together and might perhaps be better suited to me, but I will do my best not to let the side down. I had a comment from someone from my native home town of Stockport recently that saw the White House pieces on my social media. He said, "Not bad for a lad from Stockport, eh, Paul!" Being in the grounds of Buckingham Palace might make the 'Local lad makes good!' category this time.

No doubt: I'll keep you posted.