I’ve known Jamie on and off for about ten years. He first turned up at Colwyn Bay Men’s Shed when he was living in a local hostel. He was also very open about the fact that he had problems with alcohol and that it had cost him his job, wife and family over the years. It also very quickly became apparent that he knew his way around a workshop!

 

 

Jamie in a workshop is like a dolphin in the ocean – offcuts and lumps of wood are transformed and his imagination and creativity seems infinite, all with a pencil behind his ear and little need for measuring!

 

 

He also NEVER used the workshop if he’d had a drink, and his behaviour is never reckless at the Shed. Something that he credits from his early years’ apprenticeships in workshops, that “professionalism” comes through, but he has his demons.

 

 

 

More importantly he is able to galvanise those around him. Guys with little or no experience were suddenly wanting to make stuff and under his eye. “Magic boxes – made with a bandsaw as if they were out of a single piece of timber – suddenly began to appear. In conversation he told me he had been apprenticed at Aerospace Broughton as a panel maker for Airbus, but had also been under the tutelage of ex Camel Laird shipwrights and numerous other time-served craftsmen, and it shows! Coupled with various other fascinating aspects of an obviously misspent youth Jamie is quite a character.

 

 

 

Not long after joining Colwyn Bay Shed he successfully got  himself a flat and a job working with a local North Wales recycling company (who basically poached him) and we saw less of him after that, although I sometimes saw him locally, and then he disappeared.

 

 

 

Last year he reappeared. Again life had not been kind. He was back again in a hostel having not being able to handle the pressures of the job and where he’d been living, resulting in more alcohol based issues and worse, at some point over the last couple of years, he’d suffered a fall resulting in a serious brain injury which put him in hospital for months, including knocking his teeth out! However, we were really pleased to see him again having really missed his skillsets.

 

 

 

His commitment to the Shed is evident and he credits his attendance with keeping his sanity (mostly) through all the curveballs life throws at him, travelling an hour on a bus each way to attend, even though he exists on very little. Thankfully he has a bus pass now due to his Brain injury, and once again he is creating .

 

 

 

His birdbox is one of a number he knocks up as examples. He was incredibly proud to win the ‘Best Animal Habitat’ competition at ShedFest, not for himself, but “for the guys at Colwyn Bay Men’s Shed.” His mind is never still with ideas – next up he wants to make a clock using pocket watches he gets from eBay! We will do our best to support him with his recovery, it’s what Sheds do!