Friday marked a huge milestone in Tree Couture's young life with the long-awaited and much-anticipated receipt of the keys to the new atelier, the production studio for all our new gorgeous limited edition hardwood furniture creations.
The soulful workshop, in a little cobbled mews in London's vibrant Crouch Hill, has lay abandoned and dejected for nearly a year but I fell in love with it the moment I first set eyes upon it nearly 4 months ago and ever since have desperately wanted to take it under my wing and inject some life and happiness into it.
Sadly the company that last occupied it met with hard times and there was something evocative of a scene from the Pompeii ruins about it - a feeling of sudden and unexpected paralysis - suspended animation. There were objects strewn everywhere, half-completed timesheets, a pair of hastily removed workboots, partially finished orders... oh and did I mention the tonnes and tonnes of offcuts of MDF, the piles of broken chairs, the handle-less tools and general rubbish filling every square inch?
So over the last few days I have barely come up for air (at least of the dust-free variety) with a frenzy of sorting, sifting, clearing and chucking. But with every pile, every corner, every cupboard I tackled, there was a little thought at the back of my mind that while I couldn't rule out discovering an ancient treasure or a stash of cash, there was always a chance I could unearth something quite nasty: a nest of rats, the headless corpse of the former tenant, a pool of coagulated blood - or even for this new Crouch Hill tiger, a hidden dragon!
Well I must report that it was a case of neither treasure nor trauma though I did come across a huge chunky black spider who must have fed exclusively off MDF dust for the past year, and was SO angry to have had his peace disturbed he marched out with utter contempt. If spiders had human body parts, he would have had his hands on his hips. And if spiders had lips, once he'd done a double-take and sized me up, he would have whistled nonchalently whilst doing an about-turn and then dashing back to the safety of his hidey-hole.
So my rubbish pile is now mountainous, the first skip (no doubt of many) is on order and I'm so full of joy that my cheek bones have joined the rest of my weary body in the aches department.
I am claiming the space for Tree Couture, for a fabulous new future ahead, and I'm giving the grumpy spider a new lease of life with a fresh supply of flies.... and will hopefully put a smile across his lips, among those of many others.
It doesn't get much better than that.
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