This week went to veneer, laying it to stretch a family's table. They'd eaten off it, drawn at it, laughed and cried at it, for decades, but it was too big for the new house, so it got cut down — and the offcut came to me to make a fireplace surround. There isn't much of it. So: veneer, leaves cut and laid so the grain all points back to the middle of the fire.

The rest of the week was wrestling sheets of MDF. Parts for jigs, parts for a frame, flat brown sheets that smell of cancer and resist nothing. A man can do a great deal of that and feel he's done nothing at all.

Then a tip-off. The Danby workshop — the largest joiner's shop in the country once, running since 1946 — has sold the factory and shut the doors, and the veneer store was going with it. I drove over. The room they kept the veneer in — just the veneer — is twenty-five times the size of my whole workshop. I filled the van: maple, blackwood, silky oak, red oak, ramin, anigre, macassar, silver ash, American oak, rosewood. Damanu. Oh, and pepperwood. More than I'll get through in the years I've got left. Three hundred dollars. I am blessed in ways no man deserves.

And while I was still scratching myself over that, and formalities pending, I've been appointed to the Studio Woodworkers Australia board of directors. On account of my extensive qualifications, obviously, and not desperation. I'm stunned, and a little giddy. I'll count it as another blessing and try not to embarrass myself.

The van is still full, so that's my weekend spoken for. Then Monday I'll be back on the MDF, full PPE and respirator on. At least it's winter - another blessing!