From Gambia To Wales - Updates From The Trade

I'm Robin Cleverley, and I've been talking to guests who first joined me a year ago so that I can get an update of what they've been up to.

But what about me? What are some interesting updates I have from my recent work and experiences that you might not know about? Okay.

So, um, in the last year, I traveled so much, and it's the...

If, if someone had said to me when I started on June the 2nd, 1986, walked into the college workshop for my first two weeks at college, it was just before summer broke up, and they got us all in to do two weeks of, like, trying carpentry and brickwork.

If someone had said to me then that fast-forward 40 years to now I'm 56, that, uh, my work as a, as a carpenter and joiner would take me all around the world, I would have never believed them.

And yes, I know it's through the lens of the fact that I do YouTube, and I'm on sort of social media, and I work with a lot of brands, and I'm fortunate enough to have the seat here at Fix Radio for the carpentry show, which I truly value.

But I wouldn't have believed them.

And on my travels, I ultimately meet a lot of carpenters, and you'd be surprised how many carpenters from the UK go and work abroad.

And I think this is my point, is the fact that carpentry and joinery as a craft is beautiful.

It's insulated from quite a lot of technology.

Um, it's something that you, we're gonna struggle to replace with machinery and robots, um, is...

And it's, it's always gonna also give us that lovely mindfulness that comes with creating something.

And I've worked, um, last year I traveled out with Charlie from Tree, uh, Treehouse Life, who's been on the show a couple of times, and we looked at their work in Spain, where they were building a massive adventure playground with tree houses and rope swings in, in incredible heat.

And that's just an example of the fact that have trade, will travel.

And lots of young people go off to Australia.

They get work visas because of their trade.

It's really, really brilliant.

I've also been doing a lot in the health and safety space because the more I do publicly, especially on YouTube, the more I am careful because of the fact that, A, I wanna make sure that I'm safe, of course, but I don't want to do something which is unsafe and someone copy me and have an accident because that is just the total opposite to what I'm all about, okay? Um, and travel has taken me to France.

I went to France with a, um, a, a p- a plywood company from Uruguay run by a, a guy in Ireland who looks after Europe, um, a guy called John, and he's fantastic.

And he said, "Oh, you gotta get, have a look at the, our plywood.

It's fully sustainable." So I've been doing stuff on the sustainability front as well, trying to get my head around why is it so important, this sustainability stuff.

And I think all of this, all of these areas, like health and safety, sustainability, whether we like it or not, is really important, okay? Um, and also, I'm making a conscious decision to start cycling to work.

So that's, so my plan is on a Monday, I drive the van over, leave the van on site, and then I'll get my bike out on the end of the day Monday, and I'll go backwards and forwards.

And the reason for that is because it's only about eight miles from where I live to the current job that I'm, I'm taking on, which is about a year or two's work.

Um, my thoughts behind this are twofold.