The Thyme Roof Workshop

Initially designed by Tim to be the oiling room to finish the pieces. Very quickly the workshop was too small and ended up being an unsatisfactory storage space instead. The space was used to build the panels for Skara Brae. In the mid-nineties, with Tim’s blessing, I cleared the space and made it my workshop. I was creating painted windows for Julia’s restaurant Cossachok, and for Sharmanka’s new Gallery 103 Trongate.

After Tim died, I cleared his workshop and the red shed, I archived all the sculptures and housed them in the thyme roof workshop.

A very heavy rainfall caused big leaks from the thyme roof and flooded all the sculptures, neatly lined up in their numbered bubble wrapped wrappers.

The sculptures were unwrapped, dried, re-wrapped and were stored in the red shed, the numberings becoming chaotic. Then the red shed got flooded, repeating the scenario of the thyme workshop. I asked Jim to make shelves in the music room, and from the red shed the sculptures came into the house. When I first decided to sell the Steading, I bought heavy maintenance shelving, and the Wood Neuk ‘allowed’ me to use one corner of the workshop to store the sculptures. At some point Willy offered to store all the furniture and sculptures in his store in Milngavie, for the modicum sum of £200/month. That worked well until his sister declared the deal unsustainable and the fee shot up, which led to the disastrous finale!

And meanwhile, my nice cosy thyme roof workshop degraded to such an extent that it became a health hazard. The inscription SAVE ME FROM JOYLESS CONSCIENCE dates from my painting happy days. I can’t remember anything about it. Who’s quote is it? Maybe Ruskin?