SIMON HEATH THE CRAFTSMAN'S JOURNEY - PART 5

Simon Heath Star of The Crafty Countryman series opens up about his life, and explains what a massive impact art had for him growing up.

In these mini articles we will start from the beginning, and over the following months we will follow his journey from a boy to a master craftsman.

This has not been an overnight success this has been years of hard graft

A fascinating story of a wonderfully talented man

Simon Heath - The Craftsman's Journey in His Words Part 5

Well, we had moved yet again as my parents had divorced, because of this I was really left to my own devices. I ended up living in a big house next door to my grandad’s farm, we could live there if we looked after the house and gardens. So my job was allocated to look after the gardens,I was 12 years old at this point and my main job was to do the mowing, hedging etc.

It was then I came across my kestrel a very young male, as it turned out the female is brown and larger in size, whereas the male has a blue head and tail. Most female birds are larger than males, with the males being much prettier and brightly coloured. Anyways back to the story of the kestrel. I spent most of my time looking after this little kestrel now named Bobby (because he used to bob his head up and down before flying to me).

I trained him to the lure which is a long piece of thin rope with a pad or a skin attached to one end with a piece of meat attached. You circle it around your head, a bit like a lasso and the bird will chase it. You then let it go and the bird catches it and gets its food. I had Bobby for about a year, before it was announced we were moving yet again. Heartbreakingly I had to slowly introduce Bobby back into the wild successfully, which was a hard thing to do for me and him, as I’m sure he saw me as his parent. SO, THEN WE MOVE AGAIN….

SH