Reassessment

CARVING WOODEN SANTAS, ELVES & GNOMESgnomes

Oar, Ross (Woodcarving Illustrated Books; Fox Chapel Publishing, September 2008, ISBN 9781565233836)

Several Christmases ago, I caught Karen home from work watching a home improvement programme that showed you how to build a procession of plywood reindeer for your lawn. You sawed the antlers and the reindeer out as separate pieces and then nailed the former on to the latter.

Imagine yourself sawing out plywood reindeer in your garage on a Sunday afternoon. What a sense of purposelessness must assail you. You had dreams once. How did it come to this?

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