June 25, 2025 • 36 mins
From carving tree trunks to community action, a business partnership called Citywood which is holding onto a creative space in a rapidly changing neighbourhood. "I'm hands on, if you give me a problem I won't write in detail about what should be done, I'll just get physically involved and make it happen... one day a week I'd move mountains". #otherlivesareavailable #podcast #eastlondon #woodsculpture
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Where did it start? It started with a guy called
Charles Sieber. He was, he was the guest
inventor of East London University, a wood expert.
Amazing guy he was. And he, I, I was rubbing down a
piece of wood one day. No, I was on an M11 campaign,
That was it. And he was building a tower and
the structure he was doing was really unusual.
And I got involved in working onit with him.
(00:21):
And then I was preparing this bit of wood to make something
and I was starting to fill a hole and a crack in it.
And he went, why are you fillingthe hole in the crack?
I said, well, to make it look nice.
He went, no, you're ruining the hole and the crack.
He said, why don't you leave thehole in the crack?
And it was that that first got my interest in wood.
He was the person that got my interest in old wood and the
(00:44):
different things that you could do, like river tables and all
kinds of other amazing pieces ofwood that would have an art form
naturally or something that people wanted to create into.
That's where it began. It began on a campaign years ago
on the M11. The M11 is a motorway.
(01:05):
What was the campaign? Claremont Rd.
It was an anti motorway campaign.
So you were a young person involved in.
Believe it or not, I was once. Yeah, well, that ain't that long
ago. You know, that was in the 80s,
in the late 80s. And there was people from there
(01:26):
went on to go onto the roofs of the Houses of Parliament to
campaign against the motorways. It, it, it was powerful.
It was, it was a, a very active kind of time.
But for me, going onto the campaign, I came out of it doing
wood recycling. That was, that was what I gained
out of the campaigning was the wood recycling.
I started off from a squat that I was living in in in Victoria
(01:50):
Rd. in Hackney and I kept seeingreally interesting wooden skips.
Kept pulling it out, taking it home, pulling it out, taking it
home. So it came from a protest
movement then you were scavenging the wood and
reclaiming it and making things.Is it an art form that you're
(02:10):
doing or is it a just a a usefultrade?
Well, it's kind of both. The art form, it just became
became more and more apparent astime went on because I was a
Carpenter initially. I was.
I was the person that put floorboards down and hung doors
and all this sort of thing. So you had the technical skills
from that work with wood? Yeah, you knew about wood.
(02:32):
I knew about wood, Yeah, but it it then went on to be in an art
form, really. And then that's where I met my
business partner Soraya. She worked up the road there in
in a community place called the Bow Centre.
I got Commission to make a totempole for a new block of flats
that was being built in Chatham Docks.
(02:55):
And what I was asked to do was atotem pole starting off at the
top with a boat and a barrel because it was the docks.
And I asked them at the community centre up the road if
I could do the carving up there so I could involve community
people. And this is where I met my now
business partner Soraya, and shewas the first one that come
along and said give me some cheers and let me do some.
(03:16):
Carving. So Soraya, who's who's in her
line of sight? She's in the office on the
computer keeping the business running.
She just came up to you and saidI want to pick up a chisel.
I want to see what I can do withthis wood.
I've heard what you're doing here, she said from other people
within the community of the community centre around.
I'd like to. I'm an artist and I'd like to do
(03:37):
some carving. Have you got some chisels?
And I'll do some carving. Then the art side of things
became really apparent. Then before that, I was still a
Carpenter and messing around with natural bits of wood and
things, you know, whatever. I was kind of scavenging.
And so it's been a natural process how this has all
evolved. Yeah, things have just happened.
(04:01):
Yeah. Or did you make them happen?
I kind of made them happen. There was a project in Brighton
called the Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project and I
used to go down to there once a week, take down the small lorry
with a tipping body on it and a chainsaw and do massive things
down there. On the one day that I was there
with this, up to 10 volunteers that were working for that
(04:24):
project that were doing everything by hand.
So I had an insight to what's possible when doing recycled
wood from there. But you weren't tempted to stay
down there that side. You weren't tempted to move to
Brighton and. No.
I had family here, two young sons.
I was separated in my relationship and there was no
chance of commuting every weekend from there, so I had to
(04:46):
stay local around here so that Icould see them every week.
You've mentioned chainsaws and chisels.
The animals that are around us in this work said that we're
sitting in. Some have the marks of a
chainsaw, some might not. I'm not an expert at these
things. Do you prefer to work with one
(05:08):
or other tool? No, no, it doesn't make any
difference. You're achieving an end, you
know, and so you use whatever tools are required in order to
achieve that. You've got a piece of wood in
front of you, it's unformed. I remember watching ATV
(05:30):
programme years ago when I was akid about a stone sculptor and
he said he sat and he looked at the block of stone for sometimes
weeks before something came to him.
What do you do when you're looking at a raw piece of wood
that's being dragged out the river or being reclaimed
somewhere? How how do the ideas come to
you? How do you see the format that
might come out of it? Me.
(05:50):
Personally, I'm a bit of a Yeti when it comes to that.
I either leave it exactly as it is or cut it up and turn it into
firewood. The person who sees things in it
is the artist is Soraya. And Soraya is coming over to
point at a message on a phone. That's incredible.
That's amazing. Tell us what that that's?
(06:12):
Incredible. She just said talk about the
Mama and the Papa monster. I was down in Kent on a on an
environmental project and I was just about to cut some wood into
firewood and she's got no, no, no, no, no, no, don't cut that
up. That's Papa monster.
What she said, that's Papa monster.
(06:32):
And what it looked like, it looked like a sea lion standing
on its front flippers with a male organ sort of hanging at
the rear end. And she went, no, don't cut that
up. She said, I want to make a So
anyway, I didn't cut that up. And then there was another piece
of wood that she said, oh, look,that one's Mama monster.
(06:54):
And then she went on to take thethe Mama monster and then make
underneath in the belly of it, do a a cut out.
She'd done it with a sand blaster.
Sand blasted out a hollow and a space around it and made a baby
underneath. Mama monster.
So all this was in Soraya's head.
This was her vision. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(07:14):
And when she explained it to you, were you just like, I don't
understand what you're talking about.
I can't see when I, there's somebody, an architect came in
that was doing an exhibition in Regent's Park and asked us if we
would take that to Regent's Parkfor a three month period and
allow it to be exhibited in Regents Park.
But as I'm setting it up and there's the public are coming
round and looking at it and going wow, wow, wow.
(07:36):
And that was down there on this little garden up until quite
recently when it rotted away andfell apart.
From then on, I really appreciated the things that she
would see in wood. I, I, I, I'm, like I said, I'm
the Yeti. I, I, I don't see these things.
I can use the chain so I can do the lifting, but the, the, the
person with the eye for the art is sitting in there in the
(07:57):
office on the computer. And it's the same with all these
carvings. She's in charge of all of this.
If you were here for long enoughand you didn't have that
microphone in your hand and she was carving, she'd have chisels
in her hand and she'd have you carving.
So it's, it's a, it's a communaleffort to do the carvings
because she gets everyone doing it.
You've mentioned community goingback to the M11 protest that
(08:20):
started you off on all this and where you are now.
Have you lost that, the fire of change and Community Action?
Or are you? Do you still feel as strongly
now as you did back then? Oh, every bit as strongly now as
I did then. I've been involved in in, in
change and creation in major things along the way.
You know, one of those changes in major things is a place in
(08:45):
Market Drayton called Fuldor Farm that's won an award for
being the most successful community project in Europe.
Old Arthur, he was the pioneer organic farmer of this country
and they were facing eviction. When I first heard about him, I
was in Kingston College doing a degree in permaculture and
sustainable development when a tutor called Andy Langford said
(09:07):
to me, oh, there's this project in Market Drayton.
It's about to get evicted. It's really interesting.
You should go up there if you get the opportunity, especially
you, Danny. Anyway, next week I was up there
and I never went back to finish the course.
But my passion for environmentalstuff has not gone away at all.
I'm now involved with somewhere down in Wales, which is a forest
(09:28):
school in its infancy and if a campaigner was to come in and
needed help with something or support with something, they get
it from me straight away. So.
You said you never went back to that course in Kingston, having
been to the the Market Drayton Farm.
That sounds quite impulsive. Are you an impulsive person
who's like right? I'm changing direction.
I'm. Hands on, I'm hands on.
(09:49):
You know, if, if, if you give mea problem that's in front of me,
I won't write a detail about what should be done.
I will just physically get involved and make it happen.
Is it like a head and a heart thing?
Do you just always go with your heart?
This feels right. I'll do this thing.
Or do you sometimes like, doublecheck yourself like you've
mentioned, like with Brighton, you're like, practically, I
(10:11):
can't do this because I've got family commitments and you know,
there's things I can do and there's things I can't do.
But one day a week I'd move mountains.
One day a week I'd move mountains.
I would do more in that one day than I would do ordinarily in,
in, in the rest of the week. I should do more in that one
day. So I, I, I will act, but I will
(10:32):
certainly make the most of it, you know, wherever I can.
And about four, maybe five yearsago, I was publicly thanked by
the Mayor S of Brighton for having been volunteer number one
in the Brighton and Hovewood reciting project and making it
into what it is today. And now there's 4547 other
projects that model themselves on the Brighton and Hovewood
(10:55):
Recycling Project for recycling materials in their town, their
city, all over the country. So you're a fire starter?
Yeah, yeah, I'm a hell raiser. I'm a fire starter, yeah.
And it's interesting what you say about the one day a week
moving mountains. It's almost like a philosophy.
It's like if you just really go for it in a concentrated way,
(11:19):
that's as effective as giving it5 days.
That's my way of doing it. There's lots of people that
can't do that. There's lots of people that need
that daily routine of daily doing a bit more, a bit more,
and they're the ones who make it.
I'm I'm the the the impulsive nut case that will turn up on
the one day overload the lorry beyond belief, take every kind
(11:42):
of danger with the chainsaw in order to cut this bit out, get
that bit out, whatever. I'm that nut case.
I'm that impulsive one day, one day a weaker At the end of the
day, we're we're creatures of comfort, you know, so I'll do
all that madness on one day. Then the rest of the days I'm
much quieter, I'm much more relaxed.
It's it's like helping out the the people that really do the
(12:05):
work. And that's what used to drive me
was the others that were in there if.
There's people have got to be involved.
You can move mountains, but you don't want to do it on your own.
That's absolutely right. Yeah.
Yeah. So form was showing off.
It's a, It's a that's a. Is that something that goes back
to childhood? Do you remember like, being like
that as a kid too? I grew up on a on a little farm
(12:27):
in the southwest of Ireland where the donkey and cart drew
the stones to make the roads so the tractors didn't get stuck,
you know, And I was there for that, you know, if you needed a
hole digging, you didn't go. Where's the mini digger you
went? Where's the pick and shovel?
So everything was hands on when I was a kid.
So that like hard graft as a nipper kind of formed you or
(12:48):
kind of put a foundation. In It's my medicine.
Yeah. I need it every now and then.
I need one day, a week's enough.Seven days a week.
Kill you. And Soraya, your business
partner who's who's sitting nearus in the office, what does she
think of your moving mountain Day?
Is it annoying or is she is she the one who's like go and do
(13:10):
your moving mountain day? Both there's times when it needs
doing and then there's times where she wished that I would
just slow down a bit that fail. All right, can you start to
start to join us? Because this is is as much about
(13:32):
you as it is me. What is?
The. Question So the, I, I walk over
to you the, the, the, the question, Danny was saying that
he has his moving, I've just moved inside the office.
Now he has his moving mountains days where he does a lot of
(13:52):
things in one day and he has to throw everything at it.
And I was saying you as the business partner, is it
difficult when he does that or do you encourage him to do those
have those kind of like incredibly energetic days?
It's kind of both have to run business and sometimes clients
demand to do all everything speedy.
(14:16):
Sometimes I let him to do what he like to do.
Don't pressurize. Because he's been singing your
praises as the basically the artistic engine, the vision, the
vision person. Will not possible without him
anything to do with big pieces of tree trunk.
So he is the main one strongest hand.
(14:39):
And in terms of similarities between you, you run a business
together. Does the business work well
because you are different? So he is specialized for wood
tree trunk recycling Timbers andmy background fine art and
(14:59):
designed. So we work together this this
kind of 5050. Danny, just going back to that,
the involvement of other people.This is a business.
We're in a large shed with lots of pieces of formed and unformed
woods, carved animals, but there's also a lot of wood
stacked up around us. Can you explain what this
(15:22):
business is? Who pays you what?
What is the business? It's it's a business of selling
wood, making end products and whatever gets paid or whatever
money is earned from the wood orfrom making products.
We don't have any funding from anywhere.
(15:42):
Everything is all self supporting.
We're off the edge of a busy motorway down a side Rd.
How do people find out about you?
Who comes to you? Who you know?
Who? Who brings work to you?
Yeah, people are environmentallyaware and everything is on
www.nowreally and that's how people find this When we we
(16:06):
were. Meaning the Internet basically
is the Internet is what? Yeah, word of mouth.
We don't actually do any kind ofadvertising at all.
We might have benefited from having done that, but we've
always been too busy dealing with what's on our plate.
Really. It's slowed right down since
(16:27):
COVID. Well, it's not the COVID that's
that slowed it down. It's the move.
We were, we were out there on the main road.
We had a frontage on the main road and our wears and tears
were out in the main road. 96,000 people a day going past
there on the tunnel approach. On the motor on the Blackwell
Tunnel, Yeah. So you're talking about carved
wood, which I remember on that road.
(16:49):
So every time you drove past it,there'd be carved animals on the
side of the road. Yeah.
That was your shop front. That was our shop front, Yeah.
And it was amazing the amount oftimes that someone had come in
and go, oh, you won't believe the amount of times that I've
come past here and thought I must come in.
So I've returned today and I brought my wife and I brought my
family to come and see the stuffthat you do because it looks
really interesting. That was fantastic frontage to
(17:12):
have out there. But the council sold the land
there five years ago, just before the beginning of COVID,
for development, which was meantto be happening within months,
five years ago. But because of the COVID, it
never happened. Everything, everything died of
death as far as development's concerned.
(17:32):
So now we're up a side, turning where no one sees us.
Tell me about this area for people listening who will not
know where we are or, or, or what's around here.
What? What kind of area is this in
London? Well, it's a, it's a strange
kind of an area. It's got a history.
It's like round there where themnew buildings are going on.
(17:52):
That used to be a bus garage. And before it was a bus garage,
it was a tram shed. It wasn't just a tram shed.
It was the first tram shed in, in London.
That was it that that that building there, there's an old
building over there called Bromley Hall and that Bromley
Hall used to be a Catholic Church.
(18:14):
And when King Henry the Eighth in the court around the corner
took the first church off the Catholic Church, it was this one
here that he came down with his soldiers and threw the priest
out. That's.
Interesting. And told his.
Told his army to then go and kill the priests all over the
rest of the country. So that was the start of the
(18:35):
Reformation. That was here, that was here,
that happened right here in Bromley Hall Rd. leading to
Bromley Hall, and that road downthe bottom there is called
Bromley Hall. So as well as being a deprived
area, it's got loads of history as well.
You know, that's just touching on the history that's here.
And the people who live in this area, is this a mixed social
(18:56):
area? Do you get rich people, poor
people and everyone in between? Very mixed, very, very, very
mixed. But probably more Bengali people
live around here than than anything else.
When I smell the Curry cooking, I say to people this is typical
(19:18):
East London food that's cooking now.
So I'd say there's a there's a large Bengali community around
here. And if you were to ask anybody
that would say that they're verypoor and deprived people that
are around here. They exist among the people that
are here. But if you were to see some of
the cars parked outside the door, you'd say there's some
(19:38):
very wealthy people here as well, because some of the cars
that are outside the door are 100,000 LB cars.
So it it's again that's mixed, same as the people it's mixed.
It's also interesting how peoplecategorize themselves or how we
think of ourselves. You know, it's if if someone
said to you describe yourself socially, because it's we're all
(19:59):
quite complicated. Are you someone who, given what
you've said to me about being onprotest camps, living in squats,
being involved in community projects, Are you someone who
does not like to be categorized?It would be.
I'm an Irish company that just looks like a leprechaun.
(20:26):
That that that start in Ireland.Why did you end up here in East
London if you started your life in Ireland?
I was 10 years old and came withmy family, my parents, when they
moved to here. My dad was a Carpenter and my
mum worked in social care and they worked hard, done good for
(20:47):
themselves, looked after all of us the best they could, which
was pretty damn good. We had big circles of friends
that used to come to our house every day and eat food off of
our communal table. So I suppose that was the basis
of who and what I am was, was how I grew up really, you know,
Indian kind of surroundings. And that's that's the life that
(21:09):
your your parents created aroundthemselves.
It was open doors. Oh God, yeah, open doors,
definitely. Yeah, yeah.
I remember 1 morning coming, I was still living at my mum and
dad's coming down to go to school I think.
And there was a strange person sitting at the table having
breakfast with me, mum and dad. And when I asked who this was me
(21:31):
dad said well when I went to go in the car this morning, this
woman was in the car. I don't know where she is or
where where she come from because she's obviously homeless
and made her way into my car overnight.
And then she was sitting at the table having breakfast with
them. And I remember when friends in
my late teen years that might get kicked out of home for
whatever reason would be sleeping in an old van out out
(21:55):
the front. And I'd say to me, Dad, can they
come in and sleep on my bedroom floor?
I'd be responsible for them. And he'd say no.
And I was like, oh, my God, no. And then I couldn't talk to him
because he'd said no. He said no.
He said, if you leave them, he said, give, you know, give them
something like that. He said they will become weak
and they will always expect that.
(22:16):
He said whereas if you're strongwith them and tell them no and
they have to deal with things themselves, they would do better
for themselves well within. There was three friends, one
time sleeping in an old Anglia van out the front with a Bale of
hay that had been broken up to keep them warm inside the van.
Within a week they'd all found places to live and all done well
for themselves in life. It's an interesting distinction
(22:39):
there because you talk about your dad and your mum bringing
in the homeless woman for breakfast, but at the same time
he had kind of like ideas about who did or who did not need
Sucker. Do Do you see a contradiction
there or do you see it? Does it make sense to you?
Well it it, it makes sense to him because he'd give examples,
(23:01):
you know, that day was that conversation.
The next day he would say I was working on the building site and
there was lads there working on the building site and they had a
great time over the weekend. They won £1000 on the horses.
This is a time when everybody was earning £70 a week and they
won thousands of pounds over theweekend on the horses and like a
(23:21):
week later they're trying to borrow a couple of shillings at
work because the thousands of pounds is gone.
You know, and you, you kind of have to say no to people to make
him strong. He's absolutely right in what he
says. But it doesn't mean it didn't
hurt when he said no because I would have with, you know, that
kind, compassionate side to me. I would have allowed him to come
(23:43):
in. I must just go to this.
Go, go, go get that delivery driver.
(24:04):
Can I just go back to your parents?
Is the is the world that you grew up in still in existence or
is it in the past and that kind of East London doesn't exist
anymore? I remember the first time I came
to East London, I was 13 maybe, and I came with a school friend
from where I'd lived in Bexleyheath, over in Kent, and
(24:28):
they had relations over here andwhen we come over here, it was
here local somewhere. We went to a house and there was
piano playing and you could hearother musical instruments
playing. Look up the road and there's a
pub up there and you could hear music coming out of that walk up
to the pub and there was people from the party and the family
that were in there, they all knew each other.
(24:49):
And then there's another house over there having a party and
they all knew each other. And then there's another pub
just round the corner and they all knew each other and it was
all nice and friendly. And I thought this is like home,
this is fantastic, you know, like this, because we didn't
have that in Bexley Heath when my parents had.
Moved to. So you weren't here, you were in
Bexley? Heath was in Bexley Heath which.
Is in South London. Which is a more conservative
(25:11):
middle class kind of an area with a with a different attitude
altogether. So as a 13 year old you warmed
to it and you were like, this feels nice.
Yeah, yeah. This is like home.
This is like being among the people that I come from over in
Ireland. So it felt very similar.
Is it still like that? No, no, no, no, no, no.
(25:35):
People live in fear now, you know.
Oh my God, it's like, you know, nothing is safe anymore.
You know, it's, it's amazing theamount of stuff that gets
stolen. You know, you, you just can't
have nothing. You can't have nothing in the
garden. You can't have nothing outside
the door, you know, and it's, it's, it's totally changed.
Whereas one time you could have,you could have every door open,
(25:56):
you know, and you could wander in and out of people's houses,
as my friends did when I lived in, in, in Bexleyheath.
They could wander in and out of my house, at my parents house
and it was very unusual for them.
They they'd hadn't experienced that before.
But that was still here in East London, that was still the same
here in East London. And the and the change is.
(26:20):
Is it? Can you explain the change?
People don't help each other no more.
There was a time if you if you broke down, somebody'd stop and
help you. They'd get a pump out, pump your
tyre up, they'd get a rope out and pull you along the road.
People helped each other. Nowadays, not a chance.
People don't help each other no more and they've got to get back
(26:40):
to that. Because you know, that is really
where it's at when people there's more joy in giving than
there is in taking. But people don't experience that
joy. I don't know how much of the
taking they do, but I don't see any of the giving going on
anymore. That's it.
Just doesn't happen in the way it used to.
So given your understanding of that change, does your work with
(27:06):
this business and the way you run it and the people you work
with, do you try and somehow build some of that trust, some
of that giving some of that joy into what you do as a, as a kind
of like an island of this is theway we should be?
Yeah, Yeah, there was a little bit of land down there just
(27:27):
outside the gate that was full of tires and plastic bumpers and
general waste from from car breaking, lorry breaking, all
that kind of thing. Cleared all of that off and then
let the local community. But we only let people come on
it and and work on it that have got illnesses of some kind,
diabetes, mental health, whatever, and then support them.
(27:51):
You know, like the things for making raised beds for growing
1000 litre water, but with the forklift down there once a week
or whatever to allow them to be able to water their wares and
all that kind of thing. That's the very local kind of
side to it. But we extend that out much
further to things like Fuldal. There's the farm.
That's the farm and there's another one down in Wales that I
(28:14):
was out there a couple of weeks ago.
I extend it outwards, like here locally we've done a lot of work
with old people's homes, schools, community projects and
all, and there's loads and loadsand loads and loads more to do.
But it's not about you doing it all the time.
I was going to say you, you, youcan't generate it all on your
(28:35):
own because if you stop doing it, it stops.
So you've got to somehow, somehow kind of engender a group
think in what you're doing, otherwise it doesn't last.
Yeah. The The Great Ormond St. there's
a guy working there now called Nick Martin and he's the
recycling officer. He was the guy that came to me
(28:56):
here one day and said will you work with me doing environmental
stuff in old people's homes where we get the schools and the
old people's homes working together?
And we went along to do that. I brought the special needs
learning difficulties. That was the third element.
That was incredible enjoyment byall involved, by us going along
(29:18):
with the special needs learning difficulties.
It was incredible. It was incredible.
With the special needs young people, do they get involved
with the wood making, with the creating, with the artistic
side? How, how, how have they got
involved? When we go out inside, they take
the lead. They tell the school kids what
(29:38):
it is that they needed doing. They'd tell the old people why
we're doing it like this and what it's going to mean.
They became very knowledgeable and and loved being being
involved, loved being upfront. Do you hanker after the
countryside the the the countryside life that you grew
(29:59):
up with as a kid? Or are you content to be in the
city? Both The city's great because
you go round the corner and you've got Liddles, you go round
the next corner, you've got every kind of food that you can
imagine from everywhere around the world.
But if you get on with your local community, you've got all
(30:19):
of them foods anyway because thelocal people around here love to
give me food. So I experienced food from all
over the world just by getting on with people.
It's kind of continuing that thing that your parents did open
doors, yeah. You know, the the Asian and the
Irish communities are, are, are not too different.
(30:39):
Can you expand that a bit more for our listeners who are
unfamiliar with either? They help each other.
They could. Not build Freddy field in Asia.
This is why we kicked. Them.
Hold on, Sarah, let me just comein.
Johnny said Irish and Asian community is not much different,
so they went to Asia to build Freddy Field.
(31:03):
They could not built it properly, so we kicked them from
Asia. Did you hear what Soraya said?
Yeah, I used to wind up and saying no, no, we've had, we've
had an impact on you years ago, you know, when we were there
building the Paddy fields, that's what they call the Paddy
(31:25):
fields. Because before we came here and
built the roads, the canals and the buildings and everything
else, we'd done the Paddy fieldsfor you.
So she comes back with answers like you've just heard.
It's a bit of humour that goes on.
And although everything about anAsian way of life, religion and
all the rest of it, when it comes to family ways and being
(31:48):
kind to each other and being helpful to each other and
sharing food with each other, there's not a lot of difference
at all. If I was going to ask you to, to
to answer the question this I know, this I've learnt in life,
what would you say? There is so much to learn that
(32:15):
I'm not able to answer that yet.You know, a a day that you don't
learn something is a day wasted.You know, when I was 15/16/17, I
knew everything. As we all do at that age.
Yeah, exactly. But by the time I was 4535, I
realized that I knew nothing. You've got to be open minded.
(32:39):
You've got to be prepared to talk to people, and you've got
to be prepared to listen. But what's the big, big, major
thing that I've learned? God, there's so much.
So much, so much, so much. Don't know how I could answer
that in one sentence to be honest with you.
(32:59):
I missed that. What is she's?
Still going on about me learningprobably how to build Paddy
fields. And the future, the future for
you and Soraya as business parts, as the future for this
place here, what we're looking at, what does it look like?
(33:22):
Well, the future's going to be there's going to be 1000 flats
built over there. And you're pointing just across
the road, Yeah. There's 133 flats at the end and
just at behind the back over there, there's the 750 getting
built. Where's the hospitals?
Where's the schools? Where's the local shops?
Where's the infrastructure? Where's the playgrounds?
(33:43):
It's all right building all these flats.
What's the future? As far away from me as I can
possibly be. 4 door the The Forest School down in Wales.
I've got some very good friends up in Scotland.
So you're talking about not being on this site where we are
now? Oh, no chance, No chance.
And that's not your, that's not your choice.
Or that is your choice. I've got no say in that
(34:06):
whatsoever. You know, there's, there's,
there's millions and millions being spent here.
That company over there that owned that they were ordered in
a cult in Singapore to liquidateowing 360 billion as being the
biggest developers on the planet, The Chinese consulting.
What do I want to be around thatfor?
(34:26):
So all of the new flats that aregoing to come around here, it's
basically going to, it's going to crowd you out, move you out.
You're going to have to move this this shed with all its
wood. Yeah, it's just thousands and
thousands of new flats and people.
There's there's nobody's got anyinterest in wood recycling in
that environment. Places to work for the working
(34:49):
people. They've all been pushed out 20
miles. You have to go out past the M25
now in order to find anywhere towork.
That's not a good way of servicing the local areas of the
things that they need. And is this business going to
close? Sir, I'd like to carry on.
If she does find somewhere else or we find somewhere else to re
(35:11):
establish, I will help to re establish it.
But once this is gone, that's me.
I'm done. I'm I'm off to give time at the
likes of Faldo Farm, the likes of the the Forest Farm down in
Wales, my good friends in Scotland that are doing
incredible stuff to do with hydra schemes and that in
Scotland. So another, another phase of
(35:32):
life will start for you, Yeah. Yeah, I've given my all here.
I've I've, I've me and the dog, you know, like haven't got far
beyond the gate here for a lot of times.
This is This is a very large black dog who's been slouching
around. Can I use that expression?
Slouching around the shed, obviously.
(35:52):
Oh, he's asleep out on the road now, enjoying the warm tarmac.
Yep. So you're going to pack your
bags and head off? I've got to head out there and
fall asleep in the tarmac with him.
Where did it start? It started with a guy called
Charles Sieber. He was, he was the guest
inventor of East London University, a wood expert.
Amazing guy he was. And he, I, I was rubbing down a
piece of wood one day. No, I was on an M11 campaign,
That was it. And he was building a tower and
the structure he was doing was really unusual.
And I got involved in working onit with him.
(00:21):
And then I was preparing this bit of wood to make something
and I was starting to fill a hole and a crack in it.
And he went, why are you fillingthe hole in the crack?
I said, well, to make it look nice.
He went, no, you're ruining the hole and the crack.
He said, why don't you leave thehole in the crack?
And it was that that first got my interest in wood.
He was the person that got my interest in old wood and the
(00:44):
different things that you could do, like river tables and all
kinds of other amazing pieces ofwood that would have an art form
naturally or something that people wanted to create into.
That's where it began. It began on a campaign years ago
on the M11. The M11 is a motorway.
(01:05):
What was the campaign? Claremont Rd.
It was an anti motorway campaign.
So you were a young person involved in.
Believe it or not, I was once. Yeah, well, that ain't that long
ago. You know, that was in the 80s,
in the late 80s. And there was people from there
(01:26):
went on to go onto the roofs of the Houses of Parliament to
campaign against the motorways. It, it, it was powerful.
It was, it was a, a very active kind of time.
But for me, going onto the campaign, I came out of it doing
wood recycling. That was, that was what I gained
out of the campaigning was the wood recycling.
I started off from a squat that I was living in in in Victoria
(01:50):
Rd. in Hackney and I kept seeingreally interesting wooden skips.
Kept pulling it out, taking it home, pulling it out, taking it
home. So it came from a protest
movement then you were scavenging the wood and
reclaiming it and making things.Is it an art form that you're
(02:10):
doing or is it a just a a usefultrade?
Well, it's kind of both. The art form, it just became
became more and more apparent astime went on because I was a
Carpenter initially. I was.
I was the person that put floorboards down and hung doors
and all this sort of thing. So you had the technical skills
from that work with wood? Yeah, you knew about wood.
(02:32):
I knew about wood, Yeah, but it it then went on to be in an art
form, really. And then that's where I met my
business partner Soraya. She worked up the road there in
in a community place called the Bow Centre.
I got Commission to make a totempole for a new block of flats
that was being built in Chatham Docks.
(02:55):
And what I was asked to do was atotem pole starting off at the
top with a boat and a barrel because it was the docks.
And I asked them at the community centre up the road if
I could do the carving up there so I could involve community
people. And this is where I met my now
business partner Soraya, and shewas the first one that come
along and said give me some cheers and let me do some.
(03:16):
Carving. So Soraya, who's who's in her
line of sight? She's in the office on the
computer keeping the business running.
She just came up to you and saidI want to pick up a chisel.
I want to see what I can do withthis wood.
I've heard what you're doing here, she said from other people
within the community of the community centre around.
I'd like to. I'm an artist and I'd like to do
(03:37):
some carving. Have you got some chisels?
And I'll do some carving. Then the art side of things
became really apparent. Then before that, I was still a
Carpenter and messing around with natural bits of wood and
things, you know, whatever. I was kind of scavenging.
And so it's been a natural process how this has all
evolved. Yeah, things have just happened.
(04:01):
Yeah. Or did you make them happen?
I kind of made them happen. There was a project in Brighton
called the Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project and I
used to go down to there once a week, take down the small lorry
with a tipping body on it and a chainsaw and do massive things
down there. On the one day that I was there
with this, up to 10 volunteers that were working for that
(04:24):
project that were doing everything by hand.
So I had an insight to what's possible when doing recycled
wood from there. But you weren't tempted to stay
down there that side. You weren't tempted to move to
Brighton and. No.
I had family here, two young sons.
I was separated in my relationship and there was no
chance of commuting every weekend from there, so I had to
(04:46):
stay local around here so that Icould see them every week.
You've mentioned chainsaws and chisels.
The animals that are around us in this work said that we're
sitting in. Some have the marks of a
chainsaw, some might not. I'm not an expert at these
things. Do you prefer to work with one
(05:08):
or other tool? No, no, it doesn't make any
difference. You're achieving an end, you
know, and so you use whatever tools are required in order to
achieve that. You've got a piece of wood in
front of you, it's unformed. I remember watching ATV
(05:30):
programme years ago when I was akid about a stone sculptor and
he said he sat and he looked at the block of stone for sometimes
weeks before something came to him.
What do you do when you're looking at a raw piece of wood
that's being dragged out the river or being reclaimed
somewhere? How how do the ideas come to
you? How do you see the format that
might come out of it? Me.
(05:50):
Personally, I'm a bit of a Yeti when it comes to that.
I either leave it exactly as it is or cut it up and turn it into
firewood. The person who sees things in it
is the artist is Soraya. And Soraya is coming over to
point at a message on a phone. That's incredible.
That's amazing. Tell us what that that's?
(06:12):
Incredible. She just said talk about the
Mama and the Papa monster. I was down in Kent on a on an
environmental project and I was just about to cut some wood into
firewood and she's got no, no, no, no, no, no, don't cut that
up. That's Papa monster.
What she said, that's Papa monster.
(06:32):
And what it looked like, it looked like a sea lion standing
on its front flippers with a male organ sort of hanging at
the rear end. And she went, no, don't cut that
up. She said, I want to make a So
anyway, I didn't cut that up. And then there was another piece
of wood that she said, oh, look,that one's Mama monster.
(06:54):
And then she went on to take thethe Mama monster and then make
underneath in the belly of it, do a a cut out.
She'd done it with a sand blaster.
Sand blasted out a hollow and a space around it and made a baby
underneath. Mama monster.
So all this was in Soraya's head.
This was her vision. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(07:14):
And when she explained it to you, were you just like, I don't
understand what you're talking about.
I can't see when I, there's somebody, an architect came in
that was doing an exhibition in Regent's Park and asked us if we
would take that to Regent's Parkfor a three month period and
allow it to be exhibited in Regents Park.
But as I'm setting it up and there's the public are coming
round and looking at it and going wow, wow, wow.
(07:36):
And that was down there on this little garden up until quite
recently when it rotted away andfell apart.
From then on, I really appreciated the things that she
would see in wood. I, I, I, I'm, like I said, I'm
the Yeti. I, I, I don't see these things.
I can use the chain so I can do the lifting, but the, the, the
person with the eye for the art is sitting in there in the
(07:57):
office on the computer. And it's the same with all these
carvings. She's in charge of all of this.
If you were here for long enoughand you didn't have that
microphone in your hand and she was carving, she'd have chisels
in her hand and she'd have you carving.
So it's, it's a, it's a communaleffort to do the carvings
because she gets everyone doing it.
You've mentioned community goingback to the M11 protest that
(08:20):
started you off on all this and where you are now.
Have you lost that, the fire of change and Community Action?
Or are you? Do you still feel as strongly
now as you did back then? Oh, every bit as strongly now as
I did then. I've been involved in in, in
change and creation in major things along the way.
You know, one of those changes in major things is a place in
(08:45):
Market Drayton called Fuldor Farm that's won an award for
being the most successful community project in Europe.
Old Arthur, he was the pioneer organic farmer of this country
and they were facing eviction. When I first heard about him, I
was in Kingston College doing a degree in permaculture and
sustainable development when a tutor called Andy Langford said
(09:07):
to me, oh, there's this project in Market Drayton.
It's about to get evicted. It's really interesting.
You should go up there if you get the opportunity, especially
you, Danny. Anyway, next week I was up there
and I never went back to finish the course.
But my passion for environmentalstuff has not gone away at all.
I'm now involved with somewhere down in Wales, which is a forest
(09:28):
school in its infancy and if a campaigner was to come in and
needed help with something or support with something, they get
it from me straight away. So.
You said you never went back to that course in Kingston, having
been to the the Market Drayton Farm.
That sounds quite impulsive. Are you an impulsive person
who's like right? I'm changing direction.
I'm. Hands on, I'm hands on.
(09:49):
You know, if, if, if you give mea problem that's in front of me,
I won't write a detail about what should be done.
I will just physically get involved and make it happen.
Is it like a head and a heart thing?
Do you just always go with your heart?
This feels right. I'll do this thing.
Or do you sometimes like, doublecheck yourself like you've
mentioned, like with Brighton, you're like, practically, I
(10:11):
can't do this because I've got family commitments and you know,
there's things I can do and there's things I can't do.
But one day a week I'd move mountains.
One day a week I'd move mountains.
I would do more in that one day than I would do ordinarily in,
in, in the rest of the week. I should do more in that one
day. So I, I, I will act, but I will
(10:32):
certainly make the most of it, you know, wherever I can.
And about four, maybe five yearsago, I was publicly thanked by
the Mayor S of Brighton for having been volunteer number one
in the Brighton and Hovewood reciting project and making it
into what it is today. And now there's 4547 other
projects that model themselves on the Brighton and Hovewood
(10:55):
Recycling Project for recycling materials in their town, their
city, all over the country. So you're a fire starter?
Yeah, yeah, I'm a hell raiser. I'm a fire starter, yeah.
And it's interesting what you say about the one day a week
moving mountains. It's almost like a philosophy.
It's like if you just really go for it in a concentrated way,
(11:19):
that's as effective as giving it5 days.
That's my way of doing it. There's lots of people that
can't do that. There's lots of people that need
that daily routine of daily doing a bit more, a bit more,
and they're the ones who make it.
I'm I'm the the the impulsive nut case that will turn up on
the one day overload the lorry beyond belief, take every kind
(11:42):
of danger with the chainsaw in order to cut this bit out, get
that bit out, whatever. I'm that nut case.
I'm that impulsive one day, one day a weaker At the end of the
day, we're we're creatures of comfort, you know, so I'll do
all that madness on one day. Then the rest of the days I'm
much quieter, I'm much more relaxed.
It's it's like helping out the the people that really do the
(12:05):
work. And that's what used to drive me
was the others that were in there if.
There's people have got to be involved.
You can move mountains, but you don't want to do it on your own.
That's absolutely right. Yeah.
Yeah. So form was showing off.
It's a, It's a that's a. Is that something that goes back
to childhood? Do you remember like, being like
that as a kid too? I grew up on a on a little farm
(12:27):
in the southwest of Ireland where the donkey and cart drew
the stones to make the roads so the tractors didn't get stuck,
you know, And I was there for that, you know, if you needed a
hole digging, you didn't go. Where's the mini digger you
went? Where's the pick and shovel?
So everything was hands on when I was a kid.
So that like hard graft as a nipper kind of formed you or
(12:48):
kind of put a foundation. In It's my medicine.
Yeah. I need it every now and then.
I need one day, a week's enough.Seven days a week.
Kill you. And Soraya, your business
partner who's who's sitting nearus in the office, what does she
think of your moving mountain Day?
Is it annoying or is she is she the one who's like go and do
(13:10):
your moving mountain day? Both there's times when it needs
doing and then there's times where she wished that I would
just slow down a bit that fail. All right, can you start to
start to join us? Because this is is as much about
(13:32):
you as it is me. What is?
The. Question So the, I, I walk over
to you the, the, the, the question, Danny was saying that
he has his moving, I've just moved inside the office.
Now he has his moving mountains days where he does a lot of
(13:52):
things in one day and he has to throw everything at it.
And I was saying you as the business partner, is it
difficult when he does that or do you encourage him to do those
have those kind of like incredibly energetic days?
It's kind of both have to run business and sometimes clients
demand to do all everything speedy.
(14:16):
Sometimes I let him to do what he like to do.
Don't pressurize. Because he's been singing your
praises as the basically the artistic engine, the vision, the
vision person. Will not possible without him
anything to do with big pieces of tree trunk.
So he is the main one strongest hand.
(14:39):
And in terms of similarities between you, you run a business
together. Does the business work well
because you are different? So he is specialized for wood
tree trunk recycling Timbers andmy background fine art and
(14:59):
designed. So we work together this this
kind of 5050. Danny, just going back to that,
the involvement of other people.This is a business.
We're in a large shed with lots of pieces of formed and unformed
woods, carved animals, but there's also a lot of wood
stacked up around us. Can you explain what this
(15:22):
business is? Who pays you what?
What is the business? It's it's a business of selling
wood, making end products and whatever gets paid or whatever
money is earned from the wood orfrom making products.
We don't have any funding from anywhere.
(15:42):
Everything is all self supporting.
We're off the edge of a busy motorway down a side Rd.
How do people find out about you?
Who comes to you? Who you know?
Who? Who brings work to you?
Yeah, people are environmentallyaware and everything is on
www.nowreally and that's how people find this When we we
(16:06):
were. Meaning the Internet basically
is the Internet is what? Yeah, word of mouth.
We don't actually do any kind ofadvertising at all.
We might have benefited from having done that, but we've
always been too busy dealing with what's on our plate.
Really. It's slowed right down since
(16:27):
COVID. Well, it's not the COVID that's
that slowed it down. It's the move.
We were, we were out there on the main road.
We had a frontage on the main road and our wears and tears
were out in the main road. 96,000 people a day going past
there on the tunnel approach. On the motor on the Blackwell
Tunnel, Yeah. So you're talking about carved
wood, which I remember on that road.
(16:49):
So every time you drove past it,there'd be carved animals on the
side of the road. Yeah.
That was your shop front. That was our shop front, Yeah.
And it was amazing the amount oftimes that someone had come in
and go, oh, you won't believe the amount of times that I've
come past here and thought I must come in.
So I've returned today and I brought my wife and I brought my
family to come and see the stuffthat you do because it looks
really interesting. That was fantastic frontage to
(17:12):
have out there. But the council sold the land
there five years ago, just before the beginning of COVID,
for development, which was meantto be happening within months,
five years ago. But because of the COVID, it
never happened. Everything, everything died of
death as far as development's concerned.
(17:32):
So now we're up a side, turning where no one sees us.
Tell me about this area for people listening who will not
know where we are or, or, or what's around here.
What? What kind of area is this in
London? Well, it's a, it's a strange
kind of an area. It's got a history.
It's like round there where themnew buildings are going on.
(17:52):
That used to be a bus garage. And before it was a bus garage,
it was a tram shed. It wasn't just a tram shed.
It was the first tram shed in, in London.
That was it that that that building there, there's an old
building over there called Bromley Hall and that Bromley
Hall used to be a Catholic Church.
(18:14):
And when King Henry the Eighth in the court around the corner
took the first church off the Catholic Church, it was this one
here that he came down with his soldiers and threw the priest
out. That's.
Interesting. And told his.
Told his army to then go and kill the priests all over the
rest of the country. So that was the start of the
(18:35):
Reformation. That was here, that was here,
that happened right here in Bromley Hall Rd. leading to
Bromley Hall, and that road downthe bottom there is called
Bromley Hall. So as well as being a deprived
area, it's got loads of history as well.
You know, that's just touching on the history that's here.
And the people who live in this area, is this a mixed social
(18:56):
area? Do you get rich people, poor
people and everyone in between? Very mixed, very, very, very
mixed. But probably more Bengali people
live around here than than anything else.
When I smell the Curry cooking, I say to people this is typical
(19:18):
East London food that's cooking now.
So I'd say there's a there's a large Bengali community around
here. And if you were to ask anybody
that would say that they're verypoor and deprived people that
are around here. They exist among the people that
are here. But if you were to see some of
the cars parked outside the door, you'd say there's some
(19:38):
very wealthy people here as well, because some of the cars
that are outside the door are 100,000 LB cars.
So it it's again that's mixed, same as the people it's mixed.
It's also interesting how peoplecategorize themselves or how we
think of ourselves. You know, it's if if someone
said to you describe yourself socially, because it's we're all
(19:59):
quite complicated. Are you someone who, given what
you've said to me about being onprotest camps, living in squats,
being involved in community projects, Are you someone who
does not like to be categorized?It would be.
I'm an Irish company that just looks like a leprechaun.
(20:26):
That that that start in Ireland.Why did you end up here in East
London if you started your life in Ireland?
I was 10 years old and came withmy family, my parents, when they
moved to here. My dad was a Carpenter and my
mum worked in social care and they worked hard, done good for
(20:47):
themselves, looked after all of us the best they could, which
was pretty damn good. We had big circles of friends
that used to come to our house every day and eat food off of
our communal table. So I suppose that was the basis
of who and what I am was, was how I grew up really, you know,
Indian kind of surroundings. And that's that's the life that
(21:09):
your your parents created aroundthemselves.
It was open doors. Oh God, yeah, open doors,
definitely. Yeah, yeah.
I remember 1 morning coming, I was still living at my mum and
dad's coming down to go to school I think.
And there was a strange person sitting at the table having
breakfast with me, mum and dad. And when I asked who this was me
(21:31):
dad said well when I went to go in the car this morning, this
woman was in the car. I don't know where she is or
where where she come from because she's obviously homeless
and made her way into my car overnight.
And then she was sitting at the table having breakfast with
them. And I remember when friends in
my late teen years that might get kicked out of home for
whatever reason would be sleeping in an old van out out
(21:55):
the front. And I'd say to me, Dad, can they
come in and sleep on my bedroom floor?
I'd be responsible for them. And he'd say no.
And I was like, oh, my God, no. And then I couldn't talk to him
because he'd said no. He said no.
He said, if you leave them, he said, give, you know, give them
something like that. He said they will become weak
and they will always expect that.
(22:16):
He said whereas if you're strongwith them and tell them no and
they have to deal with things themselves, they would do better
for themselves well within. There was three friends, one
time sleeping in an old Anglia van out the front with a Bale of
hay that had been broken up to keep them warm inside the van.
Within a week they'd all found places to live and all done well
for themselves in life. It's an interesting distinction
(22:39):
there because you talk about your dad and your mum bringing
in the homeless woman for breakfast, but at the same time
he had kind of like ideas about who did or who did not need
Sucker. Do Do you see a contradiction
there or do you see it? Does it make sense to you?
Well it it, it makes sense to him because he'd give examples,
(23:01):
you know, that day was that conversation.
The next day he would say I was working on the building site and
there was lads there working on the building site and they had a
great time over the weekend. They won £1000 on the horses.
This is a time when everybody was earning £70 a week and they
won thousands of pounds over theweekend on the horses and like a
(23:21):
week later they're trying to borrow a couple of shillings at
work because the thousands of pounds is gone.
You know, and you, you kind of have to say no to people to make
him strong. He's absolutely right in what he
says. But it doesn't mean it didn't
hurt when he said no because I would have with, you know, that
kind, compassionate side to me. I would have allowed him to come
(23:43):
in. I must just go to this.
Go, go, go get that delivery driver.
(24:04):
Can I just go back to your parents?
Is the is the world that you grew up in still in existence or
is it in the past and that kind of East London doesn't exist
anymore? I remember the first time I came
to East London, I was 13 maybe, and I came with a school friend
from where I'd lived in Bexleyheath, over in Kent, and
(24:28):
they had relations over here andwhen we come over here, it was
here local somewhere. We went to a house and there was
piano playing and you could hearother musical instruments
playing. Look up the road and there's a
pub up there and you could hear music coming out of that walk up
to the pub and there was people from the party and the family
that were in there, they all knew each other.
(24:49):
And then there's another house over there having a party and
they all knew each other. And then there's another pub
just round the corner and they all knew each other and it was
all nice and friendly. And I thought this is like home,
this is fantastic, you know, like this, because we didn't
have that in Bexley Heath when my parents had.
Moved to. So you weren't here, you were in
Bexley? Heath was in Bexley Heath which.
Is in South London. Which is a more conservative
(25:11):
middle class kind of an area with a with a different attitude
altogether. So as a 13 year old you warmed
to it and you were like, this feels nice.
Yeah, yeah. This is like home.
This is like being among the people that I come from over in
Ireland. So it felt very similar.
Is it still like that? No, no, no, no, no, no.
(25:35):
People live in fear now, you know.
Oh my God, it's like, you know, nothing is safe anymore.
You know, it's, it's amazing theamount of stuff that gets
stolen. You know, you, you just can't
have nothing. You can't have nothing in the
garden. You can't have nothing outside
the door, you know, and it's, it's, it's totally changed.
Whereas one time you could have,you could have every door open,
(25:56):
you know, and you could wander in and out of people's houses,
as my friends did when I lived in, in, in Bexleyheath.
They could wander in and out of my house, at my parents house
and it was very unusual for them.
They they'd hadn't experienced that before.
But that was still here in East London, that was still the same
here in East London. And the and the change is.
(26:20):
Is it? Can you explain the change?
People don't help each other no more.
There was a time if you if you broke down, somebody'd stop and
help you. They'd get a pump out, pump your
tyre up, they'd get a rope out and pull you along the road.
People helped each other. Nowadays, not a chance.
People don't help each other no more and they've got to get back
(26:40):
to that. Because you know, that is really
where it's at when people there's more joy in giving than
there is in taking. But people don't experience that
joy. I don't know how much of the
taking they do, but I don't see any of the giving going on
anymore. That's it.
Just doesn't happen in the way it used to.
So given your understanding of that change, does your work with
(27:06):
this business and the way you run it and the people you work
with, do you try and somehow build some of that trust, some
of that giving some of that joy into what you do as a, as a kind
of like an island of this is theway we should be?
Yeah, Yeah, there was a little bit of land down there just
(27:27):
outside the gate that was full of tires and plastic bumpers and
general waste from from car breaking, lorry breaking, all
that kind of thing. Cleared all of that off and then
let the local community. But we only let people come on
it and and work on it that have got illnesses of some kind,
diabetes, mental health, whatever, and then support them.
(27:51):
You know, like the things for making raised beds for growing
1000 litre water, but with the forklift down there once a week
or whatever to allow them to be able to water their wares and
all that kind of thing. That's the very local kind of
side to it. But we extend that out much
further to things like Fuldal. There's the farm.
That's the farm and there's another one down in Wales that I
(28:14):
was out there a couple of weeks ago.
I extend it outwards, like here locally we've done a lot of work
with old people's homes, schools, community projects and
all, and there's loads and loadsand loads and loads more to do.
But it's not about you doing it all the time.
I was going to say you, you, youcan't generate it all on your
(28:35):
own because if you stop doing it, it stops.
So you've got to somehow, somehow kind of engender a group
think in what you're doing, otherwise it doesn't last.
Yeah. The The Great Ormond St. there's
a guy working there now called Nick Martin and he's the
recycling officer. He was the guy that came to me
(28:56):
here one day and said will you work with me doing environmental
stuff in old people's homes where we get the schools and the
old people's homes working together?
And we went along to do that. I brought the special needs
learning difficulties. That was the third element.
That was incredible enjoyment byall involved, by us going along
(29:18):
with the special needs learning difficulties.
It was incredible. It was incredible.
With the special needs young people, do they get involved
with the wood making, with the creating, with the artistic
side? How, how, how have they got
involved? When we go out inside, they take
the lead. They tell the school kids what
(29:38):
it is that they needed doing. They'd tell the old people why
we're doing it like this and what it's going to mean.
They became very knowledgeable and and loved being being
involved, loved being upfront. Do you hanker after the
countryside the the the countryside life that you grew
(29:59):
up with as a kid? Or are you content to be in the
city? Both The city's great because
you go round the corner and you've got Liddles, you go round
the next corner, you've got every kind of food that you can
imagine from everywhere around the world.
But if you get on with your local community, you've got all
(30:19):
of them foods anyway because thelocal people around here love to
give me food. So I experienced food from all
over the world just by getting on with people.
It's kind of continuing that thing that your parents did open
doors, yeah. You know, the the Asian and the
Irish communities are, are, are not too different.
(30:39):
Can you expand that a bit more for our listeners who are
unfamiliar with either? They help each other.
They could. Not build Freddy field in Asia.
This is why we kicked. Them.
Hold on, Sarah, let me just comein.
Johnny said Irish and Asian community is not much different,
so they went to Asia to build Freddy Field.
(31:03):
They could not built it properly, so we kicked them from
Asia. Did you hear what Soraya said?
Yeah, I used to wind up and saying no, no, we've had, we've
had an impact on you years ago, you know, when we were there
building the Paddy fields, that's what they call the Paddy
(31:25):
fields. Because before we came here and
built the roads, the canals and the buildings and everything
else, we'd done the Paddy fieldsfor you.
So she comes back with answers like you've just heard.
It's a bit of humour that goes on.
And although everything about anAsian way of life, religion and
all the rest of it, when it comes to family ways and being
(31:48):
kind to each other and being helpful to each other and
sharing food with each other, there's not a lot of difference
at all. If I was going to ask you to, to
to answer the question this I know, this I've learnt in life,
what would you say? There is so much to learn that
(32:15):
I'm not able to answer that yet.You know, a a day that you don't
learn something is a day wasted.You know, when I was 15/16/17, I
knew everything. As we all do at that age.
Yeah, exactly. But by the time I was 4535, I
realized that I knew nothing. You've got to be open minded.
(32:39):
You've got to be prepared to talk to people, and you've got
to be prepared to listen. But what's the big, big, major
thing that I've learned? God, there's so much.
So much, so much, so much. Don't know how I could answer
that in one sentence to be honest with you.
(32:59):
I missed that. What is she's?
Still going on about me learningprobably how to build Paddy
fields. And the future, the future for
you and Soraya as business parts, as the future for this
place here, what we're looking at, what does it look like?
(33:22):
Well, the future's going to be there's going to be 1000 flats
built over there. And you're pointing just across
the road, Yeah. There's 133 flats at the end and
just at behind the back over there, there's the 750 getting
built. Where's the hospitals?
Where's the schools? Where's the local shops?
Where's the infrastructure? Where's the playgrounds?
(33:43):
It's all right building all these flats.
What's the future? As far away from me as I can
possibly be. 4 door the The Forest School down in Wales.
I've got some very good friends up in Scotland.
So you're talking about not being on this site where we are
now? Oh, no chance, No chance.
And that's not your, that's not your choice.
Or that is your choice. I've got no say in that
(34:06):
whatsoever. You know, there's, there's,
there's millions and millions being spent here.
That company over there that owned that they were ordered in
a cult in Singapore to liquidateowing 360 billion as being the
biggest developers on the planet, The Chinese consulting.
What do I want to be around thatfor?
(34:26):
So all of the new flats that aregoing to come around here, it's
basically going to, it's going to crowd you out, move you out.
You're going to have to move this this shed with all its
wood. Yeah, it's just thousands and
thousands of new flats and people.
There's there's nobody's got anyinterest in wood recycling in
that environment. Places to work for the working
(34:49):
people. They've all been pushed out 20
miles. You have to go out past the M25
now in order to find anywhere towork.
That's not a good way of servicing the local areas of the
things that they need. And is this business going to
close? Sir, I'd like to carry on.
If she does find somewhere else or we find somewhere else to re
(35:11):
establish, I will help to re establish it.
But once this is gone, that's me.
I'm done. I'm I'm off to give time at the
likes of Faldo Farm, the likes of the the Forest Farm down in
Wales, my good friends in Scotland that are doing
incredible stuff to do with hydra schemes and that in
Scotland. So another, another phase of
(35:32):
life will start for you, Yeah. Yeah, I've given my all here.
I've I've, I've me and the dog, you know, like haven't got far
beyond the gate here for a lot of times.
This is This is a very large black dog who's been slouching
around. Can I use that expression?
Slouching around the shed, obviously.
(35:52):
Oh, he's asleep out on the road now, enjoying the warm tarmac.
Yep. So you're going to pack your
bags and head off? I've got to head out there and
fall asleep in the tarmac with him.
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