A window into LandWorks

Rodney says: “[the box for sale on the stall] took two or three days, something like that… it’s one of those things where practice makes perfect, I mean once I’ve got it… once I get spot on with my, one of my things is my accuracy when I chop wood, when you’re making things, even these, just being the slightest bit out, it’s just a bit hit and miss really, sometimes it goes really well and other times… it’s just about taking your time to do it and a lot of time I rush into it, or I get frustrated with it or something like that, patience is one thing I struggle with actually… I come out here and I get my head down, out here this is where I come to feel I could do something with my life really, where I don’t feel so much like I’m bumming around, you know I do productive things…

Me personally I hate Christmas, I went through the [care] system just before Christmas, and I spent two Christmas’s in care, I don’t know how… I suppose the kids that grow up in it don’t know any different, but for me to go from what was Christmas with my family to complete strangers it was very weird, and it’s very awkward as well Christmas morning, it’s just, it just doesn’t feel right to me it’s not… but then I went anti-Christmas as soon as I left home… being in care over Christmas, [means] it’s not my favourite time of the year, I mean I know at some point later in life, when it comes to kids and things like that, I’m going to have to be, and I know that, and I’m willing to accept that, but I’m allowed to be grumpy about it for a few years in my mind, as long as I don’t affect anyone else at Christmas why can’t I?

It’s the Christmas songs that drive me mad… I used to love them, I used to absolutely love ‘em, we used to have Christmas songs on when we put the tree decorations up and stuff, it was just the year it went wrong at Christmas, I’ve always hated it since then, ‘cos I was kicked out by dad a week before Christmas, so that was really where it went wrong… it was just shit from then on…

It was the Christmas before my GCSEs that everything went tits up, which wasn’t very helpful, you finish, you go away for Christmas, you come back to school in January and you’ve got 5 months of solid exams, so horrible having to… you know, I dropped everything apart from Maths, English and Science because I just, I couldn’t concentrate, I could barely stay in school, I was a nightmare for school really, I used to jump the gates, I just used to run away from it all the time, I didn’t want to do it,  I was so angry at the fact that I was going into care, it was almost embarrassing, it just sort of sent me off on a weird one…

I am compromising though, instead of buying a bottle of spiced rum and drinking myself under the Christmas tree, I’m going over to [my girlfriend’s family] for Christmas…