Nick Gibbs

Despite raising the fence on my chickens’ run, the escapologist amongst them, Hendini, has found a way out. She simply flies up onto the bar I introduced to reinforce the barrier. They she stood, this morning, calling out, I think because she couldn’t get down, or perhaps to say: “That’s how it’s done,” to her less ambitious colleagues. Now I just have to find where she’s been laying her freedom eggs, which something else is stealing, eating and depositing on the lawn.

What’s likely to have stolen and eaten Millais, our Pre-Raphaelite hen’s, egg?

Though magazines should be the only thing on my mind currently, especially as I’m trying to get British Woodworking to press, a rogue chicken that repeatedly escapes its nest is taking up more time than I care. She seems to get out and lay somewhere in the garden, where we do not know, and later, on a couple of occasions (once she’s back in the pen) a broken and empty egg appears mysteriously on the lawn, twice in exactly the same spot. Very strange. A further occurrence is that a small bird has built a nest and laid an egg in the tablesaw I’ve been advertising for sale. It’s currently stored in a redundant horsebox, and I won’t be able to show it to anyone till any chicks have flown the saw!

I’ve been considering the launch of a magazine focusing on sustainability for ordinary folk wanting to Do Their Bit for a while. On the way back from an interview for Living Woods I stopped at some light beside a warehouse with a big logo for Barefoot, a defunct business, I think. It felt ideal for a magazine that would help people who want to tread more lightly on the planet.

I then asked my friend Christian to come up with a cover for the magazine, and some basic layouts. Then I had to find an editor to commission ideas and search for contributors.

The blades for the Schools Planemaking Challenge have arrived and are being dispatched to participating DT departments. This is a campaign we run every year, with pupils making wooden planes using the plans, fixings and blades we supply, with the support of Axminster Tool Centre and Tite-Screws.

The furniture maker Richard La Trobe-Batemen is interviewed tonight on Midweek, about the bridges he has been designing. You can see them on his website latrobebatemen.co.uk. Back in the 1980s he was one of a small coterie of Crafts Council favourites, an organisation I consider to have done pretty much nothing (and maybe an awful lot of damage) for the sort of traditional crafts (chairmaking) I was brought up around. I have to confess to having an irrational hatred of his work. I just don’t get it and it always leaves me cold, but I don’t know if that’s because of my prejudice about his Crafts Council funding or the design of his work. Actually I now discover that I’ve crossed one of his bridges on the River Coln in Gloucestershire, and didn’t really notice it (which may be a good thing).

I do like what he says about wanting to make something functional. So much of bespoke furniture these days is desirable, but not needed. He likes to show all the parts of his bridges so you can see what’s going on as you cross. They look a bit of a mess to me, but I do like the way he’s continually battling with lawyer’s over the safety of his bridges. There’s an exhibition of his work in Farnham, Surrey now, and at the Ruthin Gallery in Wales this summer. His interview was cut rather short, perhaps because the speedway rider from New Zealand was more interesting.