Thursday 16 December 2010

A Good Week I Think

Pick up Sticks
 College Trip
Reflecting over the past week the most interesting day was Wednesday. I was asked to accompany some of the Level 1 Joinery students and two tutors to a sawmill on the north side of Carlisle near Rockcliff. Which was just as well as none of them had a clue how to get there. 
This trip was especially interesting as the timber wagons pass through the town several times a day and it was a chance to see what happened to all this timber.
The sawmill is owned by BSW Timber and they are the largest saw milling business in the U.K. with six mills in the UK and one in Latvia producing over 1,000,000m3 of sawn timber per year. 
The early stages of the attention span
Carlisle being the second largest receives in the region of 40 wagon loads of felled timber per day. The site was built in 1991 on the site of  Kingmoor marshalling yard, which by the way used to be the largest in Europe. The timber is graded into sizes and quality and then put through a fully automated process which takes it from log to seasoned and dried finished wood in a matter of a few days. The waste products are sold off for various processes so it is a very lucrative business.
I'm not sure how much the students enjoyed the visit as the attention span of a 16 year old seems to be very short and there were the odd calls of "when can we have a fag?" but I found it most enjoyable and thanks must go to the production manager who gave us the tour.

Archiving
There was no archiving this week. It was too cold and slippy for Jean to venture out. Mr Tootlepedal phoned to say he was in the middle of a power cut and as Mrs Tootlepedal was away at the Pantomime playing her part as the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs he was waiting for a B&B guest arriving.

Pantomime
I attended the pantomime on Tuesday night and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Mrs Tootlepedal was very convincing as the Wicked Queen which she played with great passion and timing. Les Murray and Hazel Jeffrey were a superb double act, Les playing the Panto Dame and Hazel playing the part of her hapless son Muddles. To have so much home grown talent is a great tribute to the town and its younger generation.

Mencap
I almost forgot to mention, I spent a wonderful couple of hours last Saturday in the Crown & Mitre having Christmas lunch with members of Carlisle active. An extremely wonderful bunch of people who never fail to make you feel good and realise that life is not so bad after all.

2 comments:

  1. WE walked past that sawmill on Thursday on Tom Stotharts Birthday walk from Metal Bridge to the Eden Bridge so its good that you have explained what goes on there.

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  2. You lead an interesting life. Motorbikes, sawmills etc. I only used to have jotters.

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