This is where Ginger shows us how to make a three-legged stool, with all speed and ease. With the then weather warming, this stool kept us out the mud, and prompted a spate of replicas to be knocked out.

Thank-you Ginger.

Tools required, are:

And that’s it.

A Video Series on How to make a Wooden Spoon, really well,

with Barney Spoon.

(more…)

This video shows how to split a hazel rod.

Hopper had already taught us the rudimentary techniques of hurdle-making (CLICK HERE), and in this video he shows us how to split hazel rods.

As well as the practical techniques of splitting, Hopper also shows how to measure the height of a tree, with a stick. Interested?

There’s also an interesting discussion, on recycling, universities, and Martians. And there is a very blunt billhook, the inadequacy of which led Hopper to loan us a nice sharp replacement.

The video might take a short while to buffer, but please be patient. Hopper is worth the wait…

In Marazion, beside St Michael’s Mount, after 6 months walking in 2007 we are here, in friendly amateur combat.

The rules are simple: Tap the leg of your opponent, beneath the knee, keeping two hands on your staff, and stopping your opponent from tapping your leg.

You need space, a disposition not lent to tidal aggressiveness, and a good pair of stout staffs.

The singing is from a recording made in a family’s music room in Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, some 2 months earlier.

We discovered ankle-tap only a few weeks before, in a little town called Lostwithiel. It was probably devised as a ‘format’, and not a spontaneous childrens’ game, in the years following the Norman invasion of Britain, when Saxons were denied from carrying weapons. This is the historic context that gave rise to Capoiera, and Escrima, in Brazil and the Phillipines.

Ankle-tap. It’s a good sport, and rarely causes more than a bruise on the shin.

BUT: legally, with all social reponsibility in mind, no-one should ever do anything they learnt from the internet, and no-one should do anything without their parents, an MP, doctor, and minister of religion, being present in a democratic and CCTV’d manner.

Don’t do anything at home; especially not the ancient fun game of Ankle Tap.