Guy Windsor

Consulting Swordsman. Writer.

Science or Snake Oil? Three steps to help you decide on Corona preventions

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Now is the perfect moment in history for snake-oil sellers to make a fortune. There is a shadowy plague out there, and it has everyone even more worried than usual about their health. It is also the first time in history, as far as I’m aware, that there is apparently a real (if very small and highly debatable) health benefit to smoking- it seems to make it less likely for the virus to propagate inside your tissues. But does that mean you should take up smoking?

If not, why not?

If there was a pill you could take that had a 10% chance of killing you right now, but if you survive you are immune to all diseases, would you take it? I’m guessing probably not.

In other words, how do you assess the relative merits of different health strategies, and come to a reasonable decision about what advice to follow, and what to ignore? I’ll take three possible anti-corona prophylactics and compare them, so you can see how I think about this issue. These are smoking, vitamin D consumption, and Guy’s Quite Amazing Corona Kure (QUACK™ for short), which is a pill I am selling for only a thousand dollars each. One 30-day treatment (three pills a day) guarantees you’ll never catch corona. Really!

Here’s my approach.

1. Evaluate your sources.

2. Measure the downside.

3. Evaluate the upside.

Step One: evaluate the sources of your information. Top tip: if the person telling you something is good for you is also selling you that thing, they may be right, but they are an impossibly compromised source. If you are a trained scientist you don’t need my advice on this, but if you’re not, you should definitely read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science (affiliate link). It’s a critically useful book to help you evaluate sources, and critique scientific studies.

I’ll rank the common sources in ascending order of reliability.

  • Politicians generally (and especially right now in both the UK and the USA) are so full of shit you could fertilize your roses with them. Treat everything they say with the greatest suspicion unless it exactly follows the advice given by the people at the end of this list.
  • People selling the treatment. They have a vested interest in you buying, so may or may not be telling the truth. Their sales page is usually tricked out with snazzy videos and testimonials. Testimonials are problematic. Yes, I use them in my course sales pages, because they are true and they work. But really, if the seller is in control of the testimonials, then any negatives will be filtered out. Reviews on Amazon work because you know that people can post negative reviews, so a good average star rating can be trusted. So, be very wary of reviews when buying anything from a source where the seller is in control of the sales page. If there are more than 20 reviews, and they are all entirely positive, there’s probably something going on to filter out the negatives.
  • Newspapers and general magazines are also notorious for taking studies out of context and publishing misleading reviews under frankly fraudulent headlines, so the publishing source is crucial.    
  • Science magazines such as New Scientist or Nature are much better. 
  • Probably the best sources for advice are the national-level health services (such as our NHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organisation. Yes, any of these places can and do sometimes give out recommendations that later prove to be wrong- but in general their advice gets better and better over time, and you can be as sure as is humanly possible that the advice is coming from a disinterested view of the available evidence.

The Halo Effect is a well-documented cognitive bias that leads us to make mistakes by letting positive feelings you may have towards the messenger influencing how much you trust their message. Watch out for it when considering the reliability of your sources.

I’ll link to some reputable sources for the effects of smoking and of vitamin D below. Sadly I couldn’t find a single scientific study done on QUACK™, which is a damn shame because it would blow all the other options out of the water!

Step Two: measure the down-side. 

Notice I said ‘measure’, not ‘evaluate’. Because anything that doesn’t have a measurable downside has not been studied sufficiently to be safe. If you can’t measure the downside, at least in part, don’t do it. You can start with time and money, but there should also be some solid data on probability of developing side effects.

Smoking is very expensive, and is known to have all sorts of health disadvantages, such as early death from cancer, heart disease, and stroke. It also reduces athletic performance, smells disgusting, and poisons everyone around you, not just yourself. Its downside is measurable in several ways, and in every dimension, that downside is huge.

Vitamin D is acquired by exposure to sunlight, and through dietary measures. The downsides are harder to establish- if you live in Australia, then the sunlight could also give you skin cancer, and if you live in Finland, there’s rarely enough sun to produce any vitamin D. But you can get it in pill form, at very low cost, and you can get it from eating fresh vegetables, at higher cost but with considerable additional health benefits. So the primary downside of vitamin D seems to be you have to get outside, and eat healthily. Hmmm…

Literally every treatment you can buy from a reputable source (such as your local pharmacy) has a list of side-effects that comes with it. There is no such thing as a treatment that has no downsides. Except QUACK™, of course. I totally promise that QUACK™ has no downsides at all. The price is very fair and reasonable, and it’s guaranteed to work. If you die of Corona, you get your money back!! Honest!

Step Three: evaluate the upside.

As far as I can tell, if you smoke, you may be less likely to develop the disease, but if you do develop it, you’re more likely to die. This article from the New Scientist is a good starting point.

Vitamin D has a host of well-established and incontrovertible, even measurable, upsides. Without it you die. Nobody ever died of not smoking.* Vitamin D is required for a host of physiological processes, not least bone development, immune function, and yes, it seems that patients with higher levels of vitamin D in their blood (but within the safe range) do have better survival rates if they develop the disease. 

Here are the National Health Service guidelines on vitamin D.

QUACK™ is the only preventative treatment for Corona virus that has a 100% success rate, and is guaranteed to work. I’ve been taking it for the recommended 30 days and I don’t have Corona. See! 

So, I’m taking orders for QUACK™ now…. A mere $90,000 guarantees your Corona-free-future!™

But seriously, you can use this process for evaluating any health advice. Breathing exercises, for example. Should you do them? I’d say so, but then I’m selling a breathing training course in my Solo Training package so don’t listen to me. But the down-sides seem relatively small: you wasted some time (if you did the free stuff), and some time and not much money (if you paid for training, and besides, you can get your money back just by asking for it). Nobody ever died of breathing. The potential upside is better physical and mental health, so it’s probably worth trying it out. Supplements are a different kettle of fish- how do you know what’s really in them, and what the effects will really be? Evaluate your sources. Measure the downside. Evaluate the upside. 

I hope this helps. 

So what am I actually doing to stop myself catching the plague?

1) I’m staying the fuck home.

2) If I do go out, I wear a mask. That is more likely to keep others safe than it is to stop me from getting it, but if everyone wore a mask, infection rates would drop. I’m also careful about social distancing.

3) I wash my hands a lot more than I used to.

4) I’m careful about touching my face if I’m out. The mask is a very helpful reminder for that.

5) I’m keeping up my vitamin D levels with sun exposure, and healthy eating.

6) I’m maintaining my basic fitness with breathing exercises, calisthenics, and stretching.

7) I’m taking cold showers regularly (but not if I’m feeling even a bit under the weather).

8) I’m maintaining social contacts as much as possible- there are several friends I’m “seeing” much more often than I used to. This is good for mental health which in turn is good for immune response, as well as giving me the spoons to keep up with steps 1-7.

9) I’m paying attention to the quality of my sleep. Sleep is massively important for every imaginable health metric. I’ll write up a full post about it soon, but in the meantime you can check pages 245-248 of The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts for basic guidelines and suggestions, or read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (affiliate link).

10) I’m also using my parenting power to keep my wife and kids as safe as possible, so we won’t bring the virus home.

None of this guarantees anything, but there are no guarantees in life anyway. What it does do is reduce the probability of my catching the virus, and if I am exposed to it, it reduces the likelihood of my spreading it, and increases the likelihood of my surviving it. That’s enough.

*Literally every categorical statement ever made on the topic of health probably has at least one exception if you can find it. I look forward to a deluge of emails giving examples of people whose lives have been saved by smoking. Somehow, somewhere. But you get my point, I think.

Bored? Make Jam.

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Grace and Katriina cooking

Last week’s post was for the busy people finding that lockdown gave them less free time, not more. This one is for the rest of you, those finding time hanging heavy on your hands. 

Let me reiterate: if you’re busy, read this if you want to, but it isn’t written for you.

Okay, so you’re stuck in your home, your job may be gone, your social life is toast, and there’s bugger all to do to keep you sane and happy. What can you do about that? I have three steps that might help.

 It would be absurd to expect you to get through lockdown fitter, stronger, better educated and better qualified than you were going in. Absurd to expect it, but not absurd to work towards it. This is the perennial problem of the truly self-employed- there is no-one telling you what to do. That’s a double-edged sword* :

On the one hand, you’re free to never wear a tie, spend all day watching Netflix, and eat yourself into a diabetic coma. 

On the other hand (in my experience, being self-employed for the last 20 years), your boss is a dickhead who never gives you a raise or a day off. 

I imagine that entrepreneurs are generally doing quite well in lockdown- we’re used to being self-directed. But I remember what it was like going from a full-time job (as a cabinet-maker) to being suddenly self-employed. It was disorienting, and I spent an awful lot of time pursuing distractions because I had no idea how to be self-directed. If you are used to a boss and a paycheck, deciding for yourself exactly what you’ll do every day is hard, and if you’re anything like me you’ll tend towards reading books and watching tv.

The thing that really pulled me out of it was deciding to open a sword school. This is obviously not a practical suggestion for you, especially in the current circumstances. But the key point was not “open a sword school”, it was having a direction to work towards. 

Step one: find your jam

So step one is this: decide what you want to be doing six months or a year from now. Whether that’s getting a job, starting a company, writing a book, lying on a beach sipping Mai Tais, or growing your own carrots, it doesn’t matter. What is your jam? Once you know what your jam is (and it may have nothing to do with being self-employed or starting a company), adopting an entrepreneurial mindset will help you achieve it.

The best definition of entrepreneurship I’ve ever come across is Prof. Howard Stevenson’s, which I paraphrase as: “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled”. Let me unpack that a bit. “The pursuit of opportunity” is simply working towards a goal of any kind. Seeing the thing that you want, and going for it. The second part is the key. A sensible person looks at what they have and makes what they can from it. An entrepreneur looks at what they want to build, figures out what they need to build it, and finds a way to acquire those things. That could be cash, a team, a change in the law, a thousand kilos of beef jerky, it doesn’t matter. If it’s required to get the job done, you find a way to get it.

So the entrepreneurial approach to being stuck in lockdown is to decide where you want to be when it’s over, and spend the time acquiring whatever it is you need to make that happen. 

The problem with this is it’s daunting. It may even seem impossible. The fundamental personality trait that makes entrepreneurship possible is a tolerance for risk, which is one of the many reasons why so many ‘successful’ entrepreneurs come from wealthy backgrounds- they can afford to take the risks, because failure is survivable. I imagine it is also extremely helpful to have the seed money in your trust fund. This is also, incidentally, one reason why I think that the limited liability company is one of the most important inventions in human history. By capping the downside, it enables entrepreneurs to take risks that would otherwise be too dangerous. But I digress (as usual).

In my case, I had been made redundant and nobody was hiring in my chosen field. Entrepreneurship was the only way forward, and it took a lot of getting used to. But having that clear goal made figuring out what to do infinitely easier.

Step two: identify the resources required to make your jam.

This will probably produce a list of things that are entirely out of reach. That’s okay; they are only out of reach at the moment. But presumably they exist. If your list includes unicorns or perpetual motion machines, then you need to re-think. But I know from personal experience that line items like “have a permanent training facility that is not shared with other groups so we can leave our swords there” can be achieved- the necessary first step was to open a school using hired gym spaces, get enough students paying training fees to cover the rent, go searching for spaces, and then rent one. 

So what do you need to make your jam?

Step three: break it into bite-size chunks. Do one chunk a day.

But now you have a gargantuan to-do list, big enough and heavy enough to smother even the most ambitious dreamer. A lot of it is probably outside your current area of control. But narrow it down to things that you need (not want), and find something in there that is within your reach. It may seem trivial, too small to matter, but my entire house is built out of individual bricks, any one of which is largely irrelevant, trivial, the house would stand without it. But I'm very glad the bricklayer put it there anyway. So step three is break it down into bite-sized chunks, and at any given moment focus only on that one little chunk; the ideal chunk size is something that can be done in less than an hour. Then do one thing every day. If you do one thing every day, you’ll probably get there eventually. But the magic of doing one thing is that on good days one becomes five or ten. 

Writing a book is incredibly hard. That’s why most people who want to write fail to produce much. But writing a paragraph is easy. Writing a chapter is manageable. I don’t think of the book I’m working on as “a book” until after the first draft is complete and I’m then working on beating it into the shape of an actual book. (Like my new book. It's very book-shaped.)

The smallest chunk in my book-writing is probably “send an email to the editor for a quote”. That totally counts as a day’s work, if that’s all I’ve got in me that day.

The key discipline in this process is being able to focus on what you can control. I’ve written about this at length here, so if it’s an unfamiliar idea, go have a read. Seriously, it’s the one Jedi mind trick that really matters. I'm well aware that if you've been laid off and have no idea how you're going to pay rent this month, none of this advice will seem very helpful. You have my sympathy, though it's no help at all. But you might find that there are ways forward that you hadn't previously considered if you give yourself the mental freedom to focus on the things you can control. Worry doesn't pay the rent either.

Bonus step: embrace boredom

One final thought. It has been well established (most recently and accessibly by Manoush Zomorodi in Bored and Brilliant) that boredom is a necessary aspect of creativity. It is the mental equivalent of letting a field lie fallow, in preparation for planting. So especially in lockdown, embrace boredom. One reader of this blog sent me an email with this:

“Now that I *have time* to sit and think, and to look out the window and enjoy the day, and be alone with my thoughts, I realize that prior to being laid off, I rarely had time for my brain and I to just hang out. In the winter, I'd work, I'd sword, I'd come home, exercise, eat, watch tv, go to bed, repeat. In the summer, same list, but add in gardening and volunteering two nights a week. I was mentally exhausted. No wonder I got depressed! I had no time to let my mind wander.  Now that I am not working, I feel more productive than I have in, well, a long time. I can't remember the last time I felt so accomplished. Mind you, last week the arthritis in my right knee went a bit crazy, so I have had to slow down even more.  I don't mind.  Anyway, back to the point – I am enjoying thinking and having time to work on my mental state. I can examine my thoughts and decide if they are worthy of reflection, or need to be ‘let go'. I am enjoying listening to birds outside my window. Drinking tea. Taking MOOCs (one is about human evolution, the other one about Einstein and the Theory of Relativity. Woot! Awesome! These are on edx.org, and coursera.org, respectively).  I *was* doing online sword classes, but then my knee got too sore so I am resting for a while, and allowing it to recover.” (Shannon E., Vancouver)

That’s the best description of the necessary mental approach I’ve ever read!

*I hate that metaphor. It means it’s both good and bad, one edge cutting the enemy, one edge cutting you, which is not at all how double-edged swords work. The point of sharpening the back edge is so you can cut other people with it. Only a complete moron would cut themselves with it. But I digress, again!

If you liked this post you might also find my other “let's get through Corona without going mad” posts helpful:

What to do if the Corona virus keeps you away from your sword class?

Improvised Training Tools

You have One Job. Some thoughts on how to do it

Thoughts on “You Lack Discipline”

Doing Something Useful

Instinct, Shed Time, A New Book and  A Challenge

Feel free to share this with anyone you think may find it useful or enjoyable!

Thoughts on “You lack discipline”

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Twits on Twitter bang on a lot about ‘discipline’. Such inanities as ‘if you don’t finish lockdown with a new skill, you didn’t lack time, you lacked discipline’. That is possibly true for some people, but such an appallingly crass statement that I wonder at the capacity some people have for smugly standing in judgement over people about whom they know precisely nothing. They are also crassly ignorant of the nature of discipline. Specifically self-discipline, which I think of as the capacity for doing what you don’t want to for the sake of a larger goal. Getting up early to exercise, for instance. You don’t like the getting up early, but you do want to be fitter. Here’s the thing: self-discipline, like courage, and like physical strength, is a finite resource that must be regularly replenished. You absolutely can train your self-discipline to get stronger, in the same way that you train for muscular strength. When training for strength, you stress the muscle to the point where it is forced to adapt, then you give it TIME TO ADAPT BEFORE STRESSING IT AGAIN. 

Sorry about the shouty caps, but this seems to be something that nobody online is getting. If your day consists of constant demands on your self-discipline, putting your kids’ needs ahead of your own, placating your equally-stressed boss, figuring out how the hell you’re going to find time to get the groceries and worse the money to pay for them, then in essence, you’re curling dumbbells all day. If this goes on too long, you don’t get stronger, you break.

This phenomenon is well studied, well understood, and has been for a century: soldiers in the First World War might have been incredibly brave (and many were) but leave them at the front too long, and they broke. This is no reflection on their bravery. It’s only a reflection on bad management, and bad leadership.

The current situation of massive physical uncertainty (who will die? My family? My friends? Me?), and massive economic uncertainty, places people under an extraordinary level of stress. Extraordinary for us, but actually very common in human history. We have the spiritual muscles to handle this kind of thing, but for most of us, that muscle has been very under-trained for most of our pampered lives. It’s like taking someone who has never run further than the end of the road and making them run a marathon, every day.

The key de-stressors, historically, have been (as Tom Hodgkinson conceptualised in Brave Old World) philosophy, husbandry, and merriment. Probably the most useful philosophical stance at the moment is Stoicism. This way of thinking has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the last decade or so, and there are a plethora of books about it. The trouble is, the time to train for this situation was last year. So it’s worth looking into if you have the spoons for it, but don’t spend your spoons until you’ve built up a goodly supply.

Husbandry is simpler- you have no choice but to feed and clothe yourself and your dependents. But here’s a very useful bit of advice a good friend gave me in times of trouble: look after yourself. Because if you break, you can’t look after anyone else. Meaningful work and helping others both fall into this category. 

With the right philosophical framework and sufficient husbandry, you’ll be ok. But to thrive, you absolutely must include merriment. That’s the hardest thing to arrange in times like these, but if you want to be resilient, to replenish your reserves of self-discipline, you need doses of merriment above all. Merriment usually involves other people, laughing, singing, going to a gig, going to a party, getting happy-drunk in company, not sullen-drunk alone.  Something that makes you laugh until you can’t stand it. Silly banter with friends. Fun and connection. Distraction is a very pale substitute. Watching a tv show you enjoy is better than nothing, but it’s the spiritual recovery equivalent of a brief sit-down between laps, when what you need is a good night’s sleep. We’re very lucky (on many counts, but especially) because both my kids can get on a comic roll and make us all laugh till we practically puke. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a communal experience (over videochat if you live alone), in which you and at least one other person you care about have fun, whatever fun is for you.

It’s certainly true that self-discipline can make the difference between getting to the end of the lockdown healthier than when you started it, or much worse off. But it’s not an innate trait, it’s a skill to be learned and a strength to be acquired. And as with any skill, and any strength, rest is part of training.

And speaking of discipline, and fun:

Who knew this was a thing?

I hope this helps! If you have any thoughts or questions, let me know in the comments below. And if you think your friends may find this useful, feel free to share.

May the Fourth be with you

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If I had to identify a single moment where I became irreversibly a Star Wars fan, it was when Luke Skywalker use the plank he was supposed to walk off on Jabba's barge as a springboard for a somersault, while R2D2 shoots his lightsaber into the air for him to catch. The closest thing we have in the historical record to a lightsaber is a longsword, and while I had all sorts of perfectly rational reasons for making longsword my primary focus, really, it's because it's a lightsaber that hasn't been turned on yet.

So there you have it. It's probably true to say that without Star Wars there'd be no Swordschool.

I've written reviews in the past about various Star Wars films: most notably The Force Awakens and have given  some thought to the new franchise. It's a very long way though from Jedi magic to serious scholarship on historical fencing manuscripts. What tends to happen is that the gleeful zeal which these texts light up in us sword nuts gets ground down by the nitty-gritty serious work of approaching centuries-old documents and teasing their meanings out of them in an academically supportable way.

What I have tried to do with my new book is keep hold of that child-like enthusiasm, because frankly, it's what we're all in this for. I think there is really no need for the defensive use of detached academese. So long as every assertion of fact is supported by evidence, and every unsupported opinion is flagged up as such, there's no advantage to be gained from writing a book about the specifics of medieval knightly combat in a tone that only a trained academic is comfortable reading.

The first review of the book (by the excellent Vojkan Selakovic, on Goodreads) suggests that the book is working as intended. He wrote:

The book From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: The Longsword Techniques of Fiore Dei Liberi is, from my humble and inevitably limited experience, one of the most relevant books on historical swordsmanship that any practicioner, whether (aspiring) instructor or student can own. Particularly those focusing on Fiore. This was an ”all killer no filler” from Guy, obviously an experienced swordsman but an excellent tutor as well.

The book starts with a welcoming summary of various translations, and insight into the life and historical context of Fiore. Those with a particular fancy for the historical part of historical swordsmanship will be quite pleased and given enough guidelines for further research.

The core of the book itself is the Fiore's early 15th c manuscript Fiore di Battaglia, everyone who picked up this book is probably well acquainted with. However, rather than just a translation (which is by no means a minor task, on the contrary) of the sword plays – this is a proper, in depth analysis. A systematic, meticulous dissecting of Fiore's work.

No matter how slow you advance in this art, and how meticulous you are, unless you have vast experience behind you, interpreting medieval source and trying to ‘bring it to life' in practice will cause problems. There will be gaps in your understanding of this as you stretch your capabilities . The book is there to help you fill out these holes and complete your project. Sometimes, it's a sentence, sometimes a paragraph and sometimes a whole page, but there will be many ”aha” moments, even for those who aren't new to this. Fiore isn't as linear as we are used to in a ‘step by step guideline' era, so hearing from someone who is intimately familiar with all this and who dealt with the same problems we are having, is invaluable. His interpretation of Posta di Bicorno is the illustrative example. Through Guy's work, this book in particular, I've learned to ”read” Fiore in a different way, both the words and the pictures.

In this I applaud to Guy. He didn't invent the wheel with this book, he didn't make a breakthrough discovery, he simply (and I guess it wasn't simple at all) combined all the available knowledge on Fiore in a very digestible, practically useful and applicable form.

I was a bit disappointed when I realised I've reached the end of the book in what seems to have been just a couple of hours. And I really love it when a book makes me feel like that.

We needed this book.

If you don't have it yet, From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: The Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi can be ordered from your local bookseller (use the isbn: hardback: 978-952-7157-54-1 paperback: 978-952-7157-55-8), if you prefer ebooks you can get it direct from me here, or if your best option is the world’s longest river, you can get it there too. Amazon US, Amazon UK.

As with my Solo course, if you need a copy of the book but can't afford it at the moment, email me and I'll send you a pdf free. No questions asked. These are not easy times for anyone.

The New Longsword Book: live today!

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Happy May Day! I know it’s not such a big deal in many countries, but in Finland it’s HUGE. So what better day to launch a new book? Especially when everyone is stuck at home.

From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: The Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi is officially published today! You can order it from your local bookseller (use the isbn: hardback: 978-952-7157-54-1 paperback: 978-952-7157-55-8), if you prefer ebooks you can get it direct from me here, or if your best option is the world’s longest river, you can get it there too. Amazon US, Amazon UK.

I guess the question is why would you want to? Well, the book is an in-depth look at my interpretation of Fiore’s longsword material, on foot out of armour. It includes a transcription and translation of all of the longsword plays, with extensive digressions into the other sections. And most critically, every play is illustrated with a video clip (there are links in the text that you can click on in the ebooks, or type into a browser in the printed book). This is an innovative way to produce a critical study of a martial arts text, and I’m looking forward to finding out what you think of it.

If you have already read it, I’d very much appreciate a review! It’s currently languishing in algorithm hell, reviewless. Tell the world what you think of it!

The official blurb:

In the late 14th century Fiore dei Liberi, an Italian knightly combat master, wrote a magnificent treatise on the Art of Arms. He called his book Il Fior di Battaglia, the Flower of Battle, and it is one of the greatest martial arts books of all time, describing how to fight on foot and on horseback, in armour and without, with sword, spear, pollax, dagger, or with no weapon at all. Guy Windsor has spent the last 20 years studying Fiore's work and creating a modern practice of historical swordsmanship from it. In this book, Guy takes you through all of Fiore's longsword techniques on foot out of armour. Each technique (or “play”) is shown with the drawing from the treatise, Guy's transcription and translation of the text, his commentary on how it fits into the system and works in practice, and a link to a video of the technique as Guy interprets it. The book contains a detailed introduction describing Fiore's life and times, and extensive discussion of the contexts in which Fiore's art belongs.

This is essential reading for any scholar of the Art of Arms, and will also provide fascinating insight to all martial artists and historians of the medieval and early Renaissance eras.

So, if that sounds like your sort of thing, order it from your local bookseller (use the isbn: hardback: 978-952-7157-54-1 paperback: 978-952-7157-55-8), or get the ebook direct from me here, or even Amazon US, Amazon UK.

P.S. I made a mistake in the Gumroad settings, and quite a few direct buyers ended up paying for shipping on the ebook. I've now fixed that, and contacted the buyers regarding refunding the shipping costs. If you were one of them and you didn't get an email from me, please check your spam folder, and drop me a line!

Doing something useful

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One of the hardest parts of this lockdown business is the feeling of helplessness it generates. The plague is amorphous, invisible, and very hard to pin down and beat the shit out of.

The other day I went along to the Ipswich Makerspace to use the woodworking machine shop. I have a key and usually go there when it’s empty- and during plague times, it’s usually empty! I was surprised when I got there to find Steve Chalkley and David Atkins socially distanced but working together on something. Steve roped me in to make a stand for a hole-punch. I was baffled at first- not least as Steve is more than capable of making one himself!

But then he explained that they were making face shields for frontline workers and needed the hole punch thingy for the visors. I practically broke a leg leaping at the chance to actually do something. He had his hole-punch holder thing an hour later (because glue takes time to dry). 

The process of making the masks is quite straightforward. They are using the laser cutter to cut out three plastic strips that make up the headband, and then punching holes and trimming off the corners from acrylic binder sheets (from Office Depot!). I am entirely incompetent to manage a laser cutter, but I can punch holes and use scissors like a champ, so I stuck in and got about a thousand cut that afternoon.

These parts get boxed up in sets of 100, and delivered by David to various volunteer households who assemble them. David then collects the finished masks and delivers them to the NHS. Naturally, I took a box home for my family to have a go at!

The team is well supplied with volunteer assembly people so we’ve only done three boxes so far, and I’ve only had the chance to cut another 600 face shield acrylics. It’s tedious work, but damn, it’s nice to feel useful. 

These masks have a maximum lifespan of four hours, and are changed more often if the patient has COVID-19. There are thousands of nurses, ambulance crew, doctors, carers, and other medical staff who need them, so we have to produce as many as we possibly can. At maximum capacity we can produce about 500 per day- the limiting factor is the speed of the laser cutter. But we can only do that if we have the materials.

The materials cost quite a lot, and they have a justgiving campaign to raise money for it. If you’re still employed, have some spare cash, and feel like helping out, please do!

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/facemasksforipswich?utm_id=106&utm_term=gwnKBXyyJ

In lockdown some people have a lot of time on their hands, and others are busier than ever (especially those with younger kids). If you fall into the first category, you may be able to find something close to you that you could help out with. I know my elder daughter’s high school has a sewing room, and it’s currently in full-time use by volunteers making scrubs. There’s probably an initiative of some kind going on somewhere near you that could use a willing pair of hands (however unskilled), or some other kind of help. Its probably the best thing you can do for your mental health. This was certainly very good for mine!