‘Shed time’ shining a light on lamps

And when you’re flat chat at work, behind a bar or on the lunch rush, time flows by you without you noticing.

Bryan Slade is in his own time zone — which he calls “shed time”.

Since retiring, he’s been able to spend his time restoring scrap that time forgot and giving it a new lease on life, creating lamps or sculptures, which he then gifts to others.

“I just have a passion for all the rusty things, that’s because I’m old and rusty myself,” he said.

“A lot of stuff which might ordinarily be thrown away as scrap metal comes to me — rusty bike gears or horseshoes or whatever.

“It’s just otherwise going to be just thrown away, why not make something useful out of it?”

An alien robot at his front driveway is one of Mr Slade’s largest constructions, but lamps made from bike gears, old microphones, telephones and more have been made and given to friends and family.

“Everyone buys Christmas gifts and it’s very commercial and I prefer to give someone something that’s totally different,” he said.

“It all sounds a bit soppy but I prefer buying something from the heart than just buying something off the shelf.”

Mr Slade points to a lamp made of a century-old rabbit trap.

“What are you going to do with that? It’s grandad’s old rabbit trap, but you might look at it once and leave it in the attic, I’ve turned it into something useful,” he said.

Mr Slade said he had been tinkering in sheds for “as long as I can remember”, and while he never made a living from it he had loved working with metal for a long time.

“Timber never does what I want it to do, with metal you can bend stuff,” he said.

"Now I’ve been lucky enough to retire I’ve been able to have a bit of shed time.“