Walkabout

As some readers may have guessed, I've been a big fan of the late Jim Krenov for many years; I have all of his books, some very early editions in hardback and I even have one of Jim's smoothing planes, made by his own fair hand, complete with his test shavings, box, packing and paperwork and autographed 'JK'...and no Pickard, you still can't have it😆. He wasn't the easiest bloke to get along with; martinet is a word that springs readily to mind, but over the decades he produced a folio of highly desirable and unique pieces, made to commission or for galleries and all of which have never been offered for sale since they were first snapped up.

Some would say, with an element of truth, that many of his floor standing pieces are simply 'boxes on sticks' but it's only when you try to make (as I've done) a 'box on sticks' do you realise that some of them are fiendishly difficult to build.

Apart floor standing pieces, JK also did many, many wall hung cabinets and I have several interpretations in the house, one of which is shown below:

This one has a slightly convex door and is made in English 'pippy' Oak; there was just enough left over from a previous project to make it, having a couple of centre hung internal drawers:

...with a solid oak, panelled back. The drawers have very rare Cuban Mahogany sides; my grandad gave me the material when I first started this wood mangling lark in the early 70's.  It came from the then Westminster Bank in Colchester, Essex, ripped out when the original fittings and fixtures were 'modernised' in the early 60's:

As the door has no handle, it needs one of Jk's unique little 'invisible' openers; it can't be seen from the front or the underside, but simply moving the lever:

...nudges the door forward a few mm. If anyone would like to know how to make them (not difficult once you get your head round it) I'm quite willing to do a post or two to explain in further detail.

It looks really quite special, hanging as it does on the spare bedroom wall and did for about a month until I glanced at it one day as I was passing and thought it looked a bit strange, something not quite 'right'.  The reason was soon evident:

The wood was bought as air dried 30mm thick planks and had been secondary conditioning in my nice warm 'shop for at least two years, but within three weeks of hanging the finished cabinet indoors, the bloody door had warped about 3mm at the top! The upshot is that when time permits and I have another suitable bit of oak, I'll make another door and hopefully, this one won't go walkabout.

Canada, the 51st State?

 Those of the current readership who dip into this verbal tosh from time to time will no doubt be convinced that the recent resurrection of 'The Blokeblog' has sadly been neglected, withering by the wayside as no profound witterings have been produced for the last few weeks.

There's a very good reason though as I've been on my travels, namely to Canada; more specifically to British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies. SWIMBO  and I set off at the end of May to partake in a driving tour of a smallish section of BC/Alberta which included several well known towns and cities (Vancouver, Victoria, Tofino, Whistler, Jasper, Banff etc) at the same time passing through a couple of truly spectacular chunks of of the Rockies.

To say Canada is large is a gross understatement; the country is vast with a capital 'V' and even on our very moderate three week tour, we managed to clock up a respectable 1780 miles. Unlike Europe, there's no comprehensive passenger rail network which means that you need to drive everywhere so that every other day, I was behind the wheel for hundreds of Km, the longest distance being 489 Km (304 miles) from Banff to Kelowna.

The title though, of this entry is one that in any self-respecting Canadian's viewpoint is liable to earn me a damned good flogging, if not at least a severe online admonishment! Over the course of the trip, I thought long and hard about it and to my mind, the influence of the USA in this part of Canada is almost overwhelming. It would be churlish to offer a figure but I'd say 80% isn't far off.

Here's a few examples. In the above image, the hotel in Lillooet (where we stopped for lunch), with a line up of Harley Davidson motor cycles parked up outside could be anywhere in the mid-west of the USA.  The language spoken, to this British ear, is almost identical with perhaps subtle nuances that can be detected.  The road system follows the same pattern as the USA (this of course is to be expected) and the vehicles on the roads being identical to those across the border. There's a huge preponderance of enormously powerful 'trucks', many with four driving wheels on the rear axle.  I'm six foot tall and the bonnets (hood) of these things came up to my shoulder level; one I saw with a raised suspension had a bonnet level with the top of my head!  It's very disconcerting as you're pootling along and some good ol' red necked boy in  a 5.7 litre Dodge Ram comes tearing past on the inside lane!  One last example is the food; it's almost entirely how you'd expect to dine in the USA with ubiquitous fast food eateries being the norm.  That said, it's not dissimilar now to the UK. 

To look at the reverse side of the coin, what makes the visitor aware that he's in Canada? The most striking example is the French influence, even in BC.  All road signage (and it's not nearly as good as the UK, even if the road surfaces are generally much better) is in English and French.  Another example is the traditional Canadian fare of 'poutine' (chips, gravy and cheese curds)...

...which I studiously avoided, much to the derision of my son.  The pic above shows a typical eatery in Sun Peaks, a little skiing resort where we stayed for a couple of days. As a side note, I visited the eastern side of Canada in the early 70's and I found the influence of 'la belle France' far greater.

The Canadian Rockies have been well documented with articles and photographs beyond number; any casual search on t'interweb will bring up an avalanche of information, but one of the highlights for me was seeing a bear ambling across the four lane highway whilst driving to Banff. With some cunning driving which was entirely unintentional, I managed to get to within 2 metres of this bad boy.... 

...munching his lunch of dandelions in a gully by the side of the road. This was one of many pics taken by Alyson with the car window rolled down and you can clearly see a flower in his jaws.

A controversial post without doubt and one which might earn me severe criticism, if not a damned good flogging as previously mentioned! 

Did I enjoy Canada and BC though? Absolutely. 

Would I do the driving again?

Absolutely not.