Festival Stories from the shed(s)

Shedworking’s Literary Editor, Sarah Salway, joined a team of writers to record the stories and events at the music festival, Lounge on the Farm over the weekend,working appropriately out of a shed.

The writers, Sonia Overall, Greg Klerkx, Betty Herbert, Neil Baker, Will Sutton and Sarah Salway, were part of the Re-authoring team, an initiative designed to “seek new ways to reinvigorate the reader’s encounter with the author”. Over the three days at the festival, the writers posted stories and photographs on a variety of different social media, wrote stories on post-it notes, on cards that were then pinned to the shed, collected words for songs accompanied by a ukulele, handwrote stories on coffee cup sleeves, and crowdsourced poems.

Next to the Reauthoring shed, there was a confession booth run by Betty Herbert, author of 52 Seductions, and on the other side, in a matching shed, Workers of Art were collecting wise words from festival goers for the upcoming Wise Words festival in Canterbury in October. You can add your own advice on the Wise Words public forum.

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10 best beach huts for sale

There's a nice roundup of beach huts for sale by Graham Norwood in the Daily Telegraph. Pictured above is a rather nice example of an old fasthioned bathing hut from Artisan Huts -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Smart Garden Offices buy The Home Office Company

We reported earlier in the year that The Home Office Company was up for sale and have just learnt that Charlie Dalton's Smart Garden Offices has bought them.

"I've admired the Home Office Company range for many years," he says, "so I'm now rather pleased that we have now completed the agreement to take over the ownership of this excellent product range. The Home Office buildings have a classic and refined beauty, and like our existing Smart range, are hugely adaptable for a wide range of applications; office, studio, pool room, garden room or even as a stand alone conservatory. I was surprised to have seen The Home Office Company come up for sale earlier this year, but because of the history, design, customer satisfaction and product this business is the perfect fit for us."

He added that The Home Office Company buildings will now be manufactured in Smart's dedicated Suffolk factory alongside the Smart range but that the brand will trade entirely separately as a fully independent business -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Shed Song by Portico Quartet

More about the band here.
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Saturday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

Log Cabins LV

If you buy a log cabin then it's becoming increasingly likely that it comes not only from the Baltic but more specifically from Log Cabins LV. They only sell to trade so unless you want to build a shedlike village then you probably won't be visiting their Lithuanian showroom, but you're almost sure to recognise some of their designs (inlcuding the Clock House pictured above) and it's easy to locate a dealer in the UK using their Locate A Dealer page.

Based in Latvia, the company's Kevin Langham, who designed and produced the Clock House as well as the Twin Skin Log Cabins first, says they also now have a new metal corner system that is 100% waterproof as well as an insulated static caravan that will increase in value. "My mother bought one and lost so much money in seven years," he explains, "that I decided to design something that would be almost passive, incredibly insulated, and fully fitted out for a very low price."

As well as quite traditional designs - there are a phenomenal 1,500 - they offer some rather nice innovative models including their rather attractive Pod.

"I believe in only using government controlled lumber," says Kevin, who has been supplying the UK with log cabins for 12 years, using resilient Siberian Larch rather than the European kind. "Governments in the Baltics are really on the ball when it comes to lumber stocks and how it is managed."


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Boris Johnson and Daily Mail don't get homeworking

According to the Daily Mail, the Mayor of London has described working from home (in the context of travel problems around Olympics time) as "a skivers’ charter" and "a wonderful glorified sick-note for the entire working population". Apparently he also suggested "We all know that [home working] is basically sitting wondering whether to go down to the fridge to hack off that bit of cheese before checking your emails again."

 Of course Boris has previous on this issue (see here) but the author of the piece Steven Doughty goes on to compound this bizarre statement by generally belittling homeworking, for example 'arguing' that "A high proportion of home workers are working mothers, whose employers take a fairly liberal view of timekeeping". 

Oh dear.

Highgate garden office: £225,000

Positioned just off Highgate High Street in a small mews in the heart of the village, a freehold, self-contained commercial unit with office use, which has recently been restored and upgraded. The property, approximately 224 sq. ft. of bright studio space, benefits from CAT 5 wiring and kitchen & bathroom facilities. Properties of this nature in the area are extremely rare. Office Space * Kitchen Area * Shower Room
Benham & Reeves 

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