From bookkeeper to upholsterer.

The bookkeeper years were steady, sensible and, if I'm honest, grey. Invoices in, invoices out. But even then, the furniture kept finding me. A button-back chair at a house clearance. A sagging sofa on the kerb with a "FREE" sign taped to it. Everyone said the same thing: throw it away, it's had its day.

I never could. I'd run my hand along a carved arm or a good hardwood frame and see fifty more years in it. The pieces piled up faster than my excuses for keeping them, and eventually the question stopped being where will I put it? and became why am I not the one fixing it?

So I broke free of my corporate shackles, retrained as an upholsterer, and never once looked back.

Retraining meant starting again from the bottom: webbing, hessian, first-stuffing, top covers. I loved every minute of it. The first pieces I rescued were my own strays, the chairs no one had wanted, brought back one at a time, each one better than the last.

Then came the studio. The Old Granary at Hurst Barns in Privett, with its flint walls and its big, calm light, was everything a workshop should be: room for the workbenches, the industrial machine, a wall of fabric books, and a kettle that's rarely cold. It's where every commission is stripped, stuffed and stitched, and where every course is taught.

And that's the part I never planned: the teaching. Passing the craft on turned out to be as satisfying as any commission. Watching someone arrive nervous and leave with a chair they upholstered themselves never gets old, and some of my students have gone on to start their own upholstery businesses, which might be the thing I'm proudest of.