As a way of introducing myself to readers who don't know me and have never read anything I have written, I can think of no better way than a few words about Slow Woodwork. It might help if I also say that I would describe James Krenov, Ernest Gimson and the Barnsleys as what I call Slow Woodworkers.

 The 'Slow' concept was applied first to food, as a reaction to 'Fast' food. It can be applied to woodwork (and to all work) by analogy.

The Slow Food movement was started by people who loved everything about the process of producing, preparing, cooking and eating good food. At every stage of the process, the emphasis was on the quality of the experience, which necessarily included the quality of the result. It is interesting that the wood chosen to describe this process is 'Slow', because not only does this contrast with 'Fast', but the two words do accurately describe one of the key differences between them: Fast Food is fast, and Slow Food is (mostly) slow.

But, why should that be?

I think the answer is that with Fast Food the focus is on ends, while with Slow Food the focus is on means (i.e. the process).

At last, at last! After a frustrating couple of weeks of intermittently trying to post a blog, I finally did what the old saying says: I went and 'read' the instructions. In this case that means I went and had a lesson with my site designers. I think that has solved some of my problems, depending on the accuracy of my memory and my notes, but as I use a Mac and they are PC people, our communication was a little unwieldy. The Blog part at least was easily solved (I was pressing the wrong button). Unfortunately, because of that, a couple of lovely blogs disappeared into the ether, and I will have to see if I can rewrite them. They should be better the second time through but it does depend a bit on how the inspiration strikes. We shall see.