The only thing that i was good at in school, was painting and woodwork...
Had a great time when i was young ....living in a mining community in south wales
was great ..not a great deal of money ,but fantastic times we had...
always out walking the mountains, looking for birds nests, that's what we did then...
Plenty of birds about then ,seemed a lot more than what's about now..
Dippers ,wagtails, wrens...nesting by the dirty  rivers full of coal dust,how they found food 
in this water I'll never know....sparrows, starlings,nesting in the colliery walls,
every chimney had a jackdaws nest..Mistle Thrushes nesting in the girders of the colliery 
workings ,even once they nested on a coal truck ,that went up and down the valley ,
swifts & house martins ,every where ....yes much more birds then.
I started carving after seeing a article in a wood carving  magazine ,it was blue tits on a water 
pump ,after that i was hooked, my first attempts were really bad..I used the wrong wood &
wrong tools even managed to electrocute myself trying to modify a soldering iron ,to burn 
the feathers......But you only get better ,so here i am still carving away.
hope you enjoy my site, mark...