One of the revelations to emerge, albeit rather obliquely, from the MPs’ expenses shenanigans is that Gordon Brown is a shedworker. The PM decided to pay back £500 he had claimed on expenses for painting his summer house (pictured above – we can’t quite see if he has a MacBook Pro in there) as he believed it could be “questionable”. But here’s the key part: a spokesman for Brown said the summerhouse was actually more “a building in his garden” which he used as a home office rather than a traditional summer house.
No it’s not a readersheds.co.uk book! its even better than that! but you have to wait until 2010
Alex from shedworking announced this great news today..
Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution will be published by Frances Lincoln in early June 2010.
On amazon it’s coming out on the 3rd June 2010 which strangely enough is Mrs Uncle Wilco’s birthday, so I hope to get a signed copy
Shedworking book now available to preorder
Shedworking is an inspirational illustrated handbook which no shedowner will want to be without. The book features shedworkers and shedbuilders from around the world who are leading the alternative workplace revolution, and looks at why shedworking is a greener way of working, improves work-life balance and accelerates your productivity. It is inspired by the author’s Shedworking website which has been internationally acclaimed for the groundbreaking scale of its architectural coverage, featuring many previously unpublished images of garden offices and shedlike atmospheres, offices on roofs, sheds inside ‘traditional’ offices and on wheels, as well as cutting edge Le Corbusier designed models for the back garden, all-glass shed offices and buildings ‘built’ using living trees. Along the way it offers a whistle-stop tour of famous sheds from Pliny the Younger’s summerhouse and the composing retreats of nineteenth century composers Grieg and Mahler to award-winning twenty-first century fantasy writer Neil Gaiman’s gazebo. In short, Shedworking offers a manifesto for those wanting to change their working lives for the better and go to work in the garden.
Basically it was a day where people who want to become home businesses owners or are already running something from home, can get some good advice from various speakers and meet other like minded people, Doug Richard (of School for startups and a former Dragon) gave the keynote and set the tone for the day, in an inspirational and humorous way, some great ideas to implement, now only if I can read my own writing.
The reason that readersheds.co.uk was there, was firstly to learn more about running a successful home based business or in our case a shed based business (which is run 5 till 9) and secondary and most importantly to meet some sheddies!
The first sheddie I met was uber shedworker Alex from shedworking (yes that Alex, the shed judge and nice boy of sheds)
I am the scruffy one on the right.
I have know Alex for nearly 5 years now and we have never met (blinking online), so it was a great opportunity to chat face to face about Shed Week and some other things we may want to do.. to be honest I think I talked to Alex too much, well 5 years of sheds did seem to blurt out within the first 15 mins, so sorry Alex.. but we must meet up again soon but at a slower pace.
The other sheddie I met was the lovely Nicola Brown, know as intheShed, a designer who works from her shed (watch this space for pics of the shed soon), I thought I was passionate about sheds but Nicola could easily convert anyone to the idea of shedworking.
I also spoke to some people who are potential sheddies, one was Colin Shelbourn, who is just about to move into a shed which will be used for this cartoon business – we wish Colin luck with his shed and hope he shares it!
I also had some nice chats to various none shed people @MarketingDonut, @sansharma to namecheck two.
Overall a great day in that London, and I stayed until yesterday with mrsUW, so shopping and the odd pint instead of business talk and sheds.
I’m happy to announce that Shed ladies favorite and good guy of sheds, Alex is back as a judge, he is a good friend, a confident on shed matters and a nice bloke who’s pretty hot at snooker (so I am told)
I will be finally be meeting him (oh the joy of online world!) this November at the enterprise national conference, he owes me a cider anyway (or is it the other way round)
This is what he says about National Shed Week
National Shed Week is about a lot more than a roof and four (fairly waterproof) walls – it’s a celebration of invention, creativity and community.
But it’s also a perfect example of how social media can be used to bring together people from around the planet who share common interests. And this year, I believe NSW will underline its growing importance as it helps to campaign to save the internationally famous Bletchley Park huts.
as Alex notes Bletchley Park is the official charity for Shed Week, I know I go on about it, but it’s important, probably the most famous Huts in the world still need your help!
A bit about the man himself.
I’m the founder, editor and trainee tea boy at Shedworking.co.uk (Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution will be published by Frances Lincoln in June 2010).
When I’m not writing about garden offices, I’m a freelance journalist, part of the online team for The Independent, webmaster for Designerbreakfasts.com, regular contributor to Enterprisenation.com and editorial consultant for various national charities. I also blog about bookshelves at Bookshelf and about creative optimism at Thriving Too.
Having moved house recently, I’m currently ‘between garden offices’ and temporarily a cellarworker, but should be back shedworking in 2010.
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Of course sheddies you can Share your Shed for entry into the Shed of the year competition at readersheds.co.uk
Previous entrants are also automatically included (apart from the winners!) for next years competition, so get the camera out and take some new snaps!
photo credit: david_terrar
