‘I Laid That Brick’ and Other Boasts I Can’t Make

Bedales, in Hampshire, sits on a working farm and teaches Outdoor Work. In the 1980s John Russell learned to reverse a trailer and strip down a Morris Minor engine, and made six or seven baskets that are still going strong. A magazine once called him a “giant of the timber framing industry” and, his profile says, he was mortified. I would have had it embroidered on a cushion.

The current pupils are no softer. In December 2025 one older pupil taught a group of Year 5s to make willow stars, and had first arranged for the willow to be soaked and mellowed, laid out spares, offered different sizes and sourced the ribbons. That is how I prepare for a playdate, and nobody has ever written it up. One Year 5 reported: “I’m enjoying trying something over and over…oops, my willow just snapped again.”

By May 2025 one group of Year 10s was replacing the chestnut railing on the fence in Butt’s field, to keep two ponies, Sonny and JimJam, “safely fenced in”. The school said the job was “in such capable hands”. I have not yet trusted a teenager with the recycling.

So on Saturday I gave the children an Outdoor Work afternoon: the side gate, which has not shut properly since 2019. The eldest found a video. Our daughter found the spirit level. The youngest found a worm and was not seen again. By five the gate shut beautifully, and the eldest stood back and said, “I did that.”

It no longer opens. We go round through the garage now, past the dent, which I have stopped blaming on the previous owners.