Audi Maserati

Audi (aka Dennis Robinson) sent Shedman this lovely piece after meeting him at a reading. They met up again at Havant Literary Festival. He's a genius singer/songwriter, performer and poet.

I enjoyed your poetry in Havant. .......here's a little poem that had I written it before yesterday I would have leapt up and given it to you then

This is the first draft and may change.. this is a present for you to do with as you wish. Thanks again

I got a shed ! I got a shed !
it's imaginary, it's in my head.
the walls are made of shadows
the roof, the wingtip of a small white bird
the floor is undiscovered

and in my shed absurd
in dusty jars on sloping shelves
I keep the fragments of a dream
and various explanations
as to what I think it means

I keep the whirling blades of sarcasm
in a bag hung on a nail.
I keep the bag shut tight.

In my shed absurd
there is no day or night.
Just the beating of tiny wings
as little words take flight
and drift into the shadows
to escape my dreaming head.
as my body chants the mantra
I got a shed ! I got a shed !


Cheers
audi maserati aka den

The shed, the tobacco and the wife

Michael O'Connor from the Wells and Spas Mailing List:

'The best shed I remember belonged to a very old
Gentleman in Pewfall about 50 years ago. He called it
his Bolt Hole, he made directly for it, whenever his
wife and he had too many women visitors. I was
privileged on occasions to be given guided tours of
whatever he was pottering with at the time. One of
which was his "Burglar A-llarum" which consisted of
trip wires connected to an alarm clock mechanism. When
I asked if he had caught any burglars he replied "only
the wife about every 3 weeks".
In those days, in addition to the old age pension,
pensioners received about half an ounce of tobacco a
week or fortnight. The old Gentleman was in the habit
of retiring to his shed with his pipe for an afternoon
nap in an armchair. After a small fire one day, he
received an ultimatum from his wife. "One of three
things will have to go, the shed, the tobacco or me".
The shed and his wife stayed.'

Ken Smith's Shed

Not long before he died, poet Ken Smith kindly agreed to launch his collected poems 'Shed' in Brighton as part of Shedman's ShedNight at the Booth Museum of Natural History in Brighton. It was the culmination of the writer's residency at the museum where Shedman was born.

Here's an email from Ken received just before the event:

'did you see today's Guardian (p 7) has a report of a burglar sentenced in Exeter to a month's remand on condition he sleep in the shed? Ken Smith'

The Jet Powered Beer Cooler

"In New Zealand there are two things that are the essence of being a 'good Kiwi bloke'. These are of course playing rugby and having a shed."

"THE JET POWERED BEER COOLER"

After an interesting discussion about sheds with my university tutor (Dan Blott) he passed me your address. I thought you might be interested in this, http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/ It was passed to me by my antipodean cousin, apparently other great kiwi shed inventions include the jet boat.

merry xmas

Stuart Large


(Dan Blott was one of the visitors to Shedman's first 'shed 
session' at the Booth Museum who just happens to be an expert on sheds and Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth School of Architecture... "I had two 
kids with me. The girl - Katy - chose the dogs name and you gave her a 
present. We talked a lot about the architecture of the shed and the 
encroachment of essentially shed-like structures into just about every 
building type imaginable..." )

Enoch & Eli Shed Story from storyteller Jamie Crawford

Photo: Jane Bown

Dear John

briefly as v busy: a somewhat hasty synopsis of an 'enoch and eli' story from the black country...

enoch has an outside loo ('the shed') at bottom of garden. son playing football kicks ball against shed and knocks it into canal. enoch emerges dripping and catches son. asks if guilty, son denies. then tells story of george washingtion's son who owned up to cutting down gw's favourite cherry tree but went unpunished due to honesty. son owns up. enoch belts him. why? because gw wasn't sitting in tree when chopped down.

Jamie Crawford

Thanks Jamie!

Fred-in-the-shed! A connoisseur of fine tools and equipment

Shedman

Well done for your shed activities.
I am Oxford based but come to Brighton regularly.
I have a website, www.fredshed.com.
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help,
regards, Fred-in-the-shed.



Thanks Fred!

At the back of the shed...

Shedman has been sent all kinds of submissions over the last few years and as he clears out his virtual shed, he's posting them here for safe keeping.

Here's the first - Shed Bed:

Dear Shedman

Here is a poem I wrote about a shed I lived in when I was in Melbourne,
Australia:


S H E D BED

I once slept in a shed
A shed Bed
It was warm for two,
inside the warehouse of cool.
Listening to the sounds;
Echoing, lovemaking, groaning.

We can hear you! We yell,
Shut Up! They shout!
'Thank your lucky stars you've got a shed for a bed,
to keep you warm through Winter's rain'.

No virgins to protect you now,
No angels of the bed...
They've all gone, they've fled.
I anoint thee now a travelling shed.
And we escaped well fed!

by Tamsin Williams

Hanne Landin: Shed pictures

Hanne Landin got in touch with Shedman over the summer to send some of her shed pictures. 'If anyone wants to buy one please give them my email address,' says Hanne. 'As for why I like them, I think it is because they are so human in scale and you can imagine how simple life would be if we lived in one! And then there is the 3 Little Pigs connection, their wooden house was so much better than the one built of straw!' (hannalandin at blueyonder.co.uk)