Chris Parsons’ Blog

Hello, As often happens here, things just occur… Two crates of oranges arrived, dropped off by a great local organisation ’Food in the Community’. Quite a lot of oranges really! So, we started trying to hand…

Hello, This morning I am showing some visitors around LandWorks… “Can’t they all just get jobs? Mr Timpson the shoe repairer and that Virgin man do it so well” I get asked this quite a lot,…

Hello, Text arrives, Friday evening: from Harold whose been here on a placement for about 4 months… “Chris I’ve found an old piano for free if we pick up, you know how my mind works, I’ll make…

Hello, “Yes, all right I get it. I know you don’t like working in the veg field.” “More I don’t like the mud on me hands.” “Err, gloves?” Silence, while we pull weeds out together, slowly…

Hello, A couple of months ago I quietly fixed a small sign close to the entrance of our main building. A couple of words carved into a piece of slate, and then waited for a reaction….

Hello, 8.36 am… “Mate, it’s Mark. I think I ate a dodgy takeaway last night, not going to make it in today.” Call me an old cynic if you like, but if I had a prawn…

Hello, LandWorks on a Sunday, a different place, a quiet time for reflection on something previously said… “Thing is Chris, you can’t just expect broken people to fix themselves, it doesn’t work like that.” Doris, LandWorks…

Hello, “Mate, it feels like I’m running at the edge of the world, criticised and they just can’t understand me.” Jake (21) is in his 4th week with us and I actually do think I understand…

Hello, It’s 2015, a grey wet morning at LandWorks… “I don’t want anything to do with that Hippy-Dippy Totnes sh#t”. I’d only wondered if he would like to do a bit of counselling work. “Mumbo-jumbo, airy…

Hello, I’ve been recovering from Covid for a few days, and this is one of the conversations I had over the phone during that time… “Chris (I can tell he’s close to tears) will I ever…

Hello, This week, voices from beyond the LandWorks gate. Monday AM: “Chris, it’s Seamus here…” Err no it’s not, great accent, but it’s Paul (LandWorks 2014). Just checking in, as he often does using a different…

Hello, Meet Dave*, he started here 7 months ago, but this recounts the first time we met… Dave’s got that particular look (so often our guys have it) and once you’ve seen it, you don’t forget…

Hello, “Anyone seen my hammer?” I think I’ve written about this before… people (mostly men [commonly me]) putting down a tool, wandering off and then believing that somebody has lifted said implement. Visitors seem fascinated/occasionally slightly…

Hello, The wheels on the bus, go round and round, round and round, round and… Well, frustratingly not as often as they should. Recent local bus driver shortages mean buses sometimes just don’t appear. Leaving our…

Hello, I would like to tell you a bit about my neighbour, John ‘The Frog’ Bale. I am proud to call John my neighbour, not just because he’s everything a good neighbour should be. Err, although…