Being iced-in and unable to get out into the fields and earn some dosh, I’m been having a think about some of the ways I make a living and some of the new ways I could explore. Being a big fan of mind maps I’ve published it via Mind Meister and also embedded a copy below. It’s fully editable if you want to add your own ideas.
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My humble little cottage has made it onto the Yahoo Travel site for the UK’s best winter hideaways! The timing couldn’t be better: as soon as the snow and ice melts so people can actually get there without a snow mobile; the water has finally melted in the pipes; I’ve got a new hot water cylinder in to replace the one that’s been leaking; the cottage has dried out again and I’ve replaced the central heating pump that’s starting to squeal like a stuck pig … I look forward to the bookings flooding in! By getting up on the hill by sunrise, Lisa and I mananged to get 120 trees planted before we decided to retreat from the snow and get home while we could! That’s 2720 so far, 3280 to go.
After much paper work, book learning, investigations, converstations and “OMG, what am I taking on here!” Lisa and I are on the verge of planting up Bryn Helyg Coed! I’ve just finished the planting plan:  Bryn Helyg Tree Planting Plan 6000 native broadleaves planted over 10 acres of SW facing welsh hillside. I’ve got 5500 of the bamboo canes in marking out where the trees are going to go, and provide support for the spiral guards. So now I’m just waiting for trees to go dormant so I can start planting them. Although saying that I have already got 300 ash in and 240 hawthorns as the leaves had already dropped off them. Tnetennba – [tuh.net.un.buh] A word whose function is purely to attract traffic to a website; a gratuitously used keyword whose presence is aimed at attracting the search engines attention and improving the website’s placement in search results. Example: “Good morning, that’s a nice tnetennba” - Related forms tnetennbarise, verb  Ysgol Cwrtnewydd Living Willow Play Area We’ve managed to go out with a bang again this year with the largest structure so far: a large tunnel enclosing a 5m area with three off-shoot tunnels and domes using 1100 rods. More information on the Living Willow Wales website. I recently popped out and put the finsihing touches to Llanon School’s Living Willow Fish by firming the ground around the rods (the ground has been too hard up to now) and finishing off with woodchip.
There is more information at the Living Willow Wales website. A man owned a small farm. The Inland Revenue claimed he was not paying proper wages to his staff and sent a representative out to interview him. ‘I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,’ demanded the rep. ‘Well,’ replied the farmer, ‘there’s my farm hand who’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him £200 a week, plus free room and board.’ ‘The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her £150 per week plus free room and board.’ ‘Then there’s the half-wit. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about £10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of whiskey every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.’ ‘That’s the guy I want to talk to…the half-wit,’ says the agent. ‘That would be me,’ replied the farmer… After the very unfriendly willow planting weather that has compressed the entire planting season into four very busy weeks, we’re finally away. We’ve just finished our largest structure to date, a 400 square foot willow maze of tunnels in the shape of a giant fish or sea serpent. We’ve also completed a large dome at Ysgol Mydroilyn and a smaller dome with tunnels at Ysgol Mynach. More images can be found here.
I’ve also been working on some dried willow sculptures – this willow heart is made from “brown” Flander’s Red willow rods.
There is more information at the Living Willow Wales website. I’ve gone back to keeping a little notepad window on the desktop to keep track of things I need to do and that I want to record immediately, while I think of it. Now as you’d expect this grew and grew and grew … and all got a bit depressing as the last thing that I need is yet another TODO list (I’ve already got a list of my TODO lists: mobile messages, phone messages, text messages, notebook, Outlook task list, TODO pile on my desk, emails!). So then it occurred to me – here it comes, the obvious but important realisation – I’ve got the rest of my life to be doing all of this stuff. Instead of having this enormous list of things I really need to get round to soon as possible, I can assign a day to each item on my notepad list. And, wow, what a release. I now actually feel like I’m achieving stuff if I get through that days list. So now I have got a new list – my “what to do in the next few days” list. Using this along with the five-minute rule (if you think of something that can be done in the next five minutes, don’t put it off do it now – another of my favourite FLAs – JiFDI – Just Fucking Do It) stuff actually feels like it is getting done. I guess what came across to me was you can hear something, some advice, some tip, some nugget of information, but if you’re not really receptive to it at that time it just falls on deaf ears. You can intellectually know something but sometimes you really don’t take any notice of it until it becomes experiential knowledge; something you’ve actually experienced to be true or worth knowing. That’s also got me wanting to re-read slowly every book I’ve ever read as I much have missed so much. So this would be a good as time as any to get how I manage my time out in the open, so here it is: Andrew’s timekeeping tips:
Now, what else did I have to do today … |
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Copyright © 2012 Andrew Roberts - All Rights Reserved |
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