Small Ironing Board

Faith, hope and clarity: the Gypsy travellers who found God

Four rows back in the Light And Life Gypsy Traveller Church, Tommy Tams stands, his hands raised to the Lord and, as a song swells around him, spills out words of thanks, for his family, his children, all the good things that are part of his life.

His prayer is just one sound in a multi-layered cacophony of voices, all speaking or singing at once, blending, like overlapping radio channels, to make one grand Pentecostal symphony. Meanwhile a baby is passed from row to row, auntie to grandmother, rocked to the rhythm. A girl sleeps on a coat between one of the rows. Children skip in and out. Pushchairs line the aisle.

As the sound ebbs, Tams turns to me. He opens a well-thumbed Bible, littered with bookmarks, inkings and underlinings. He flicks quickly to a page to illustrate why the Catholicism of his childhood wasn’t right. However, in some ways, it seems, he doesn’t need the text itself: it’s as if he has already gobbled the Bible whole. He speaks to me like a firebrand preacher from another age: “Jesus is the same today, tomorrow and for ever more. And he wants to save you. Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever sworn? Have you ever looked at a man lustfully? I’m no’ being cheeky. But you’re a lying, blaspheming adulteress.”

Three years ago Tams had yet to be ‘saved’. He was a heroin addict with a prison record, a man who says “of the 10 Commandments, I broke all 10”. He recalls that, as a child, his father left and, instead of a caravanning travelling life, his family ended up squatting in derelict buildings around Glasgow.

“At about 14 years old, I started getting involved with drugs, just light drugs at first, but, as the years went on, heroin, crack cocaine, tablets, drink. I was addicted to heroin for 12 years solid. I did a lot of prison. For drug dealing, robbery, theft, house-breaking. Anything.”

Then one day, when he was 40 and still taking drugs, by then a father of seven children, his wife Cathy came home from a church in Falkirk and said she had given her life to the Lord. She said she would like him to come to church too. Tams was, he confesses, “stoned out of my head. I was still on methadone. I think I was probably on heroin as well, smoking hash all day, and I went and I got healed and delivered that night”.

His testimony is not unique. He points out three other former addicts in the congregation. Barry Fowler, for instance, who got down on his knees in his caravan one day and prayed to the Lord after his wife had cut him off. Even the church’s pastor, Alister Fowler, although never a drug addict, recalls a time when he would go off drinking for a week, leaving his wife and children. Then, one night, he says: “I went to a dance in Glasgow and the Lord said that was the last time I would drink.

Where I Sew - A Sewing Journal - A Sewing Journal

I thought I should add:

I store fabric in our office (my husband mainly uses that room, he's a freelance writer), it's also a toy storage room. We just "redid" it, so I'll share pictures soon.

I iron in the basement. I use my grandmother's big old ironing board and it's a real pain to open and close. So I decided it's better to run up and down the stairs rather than open and close that beast. The basement is dark and spider-y, a small step above a cellar so it's not really a place where I ever plan to sew. But it works fine for ironing (and laundry).

So nice! I also sew in the dining room. My embroidery machine is on the table and I have a small sewing table in front of the window where my sewing machine is. I can sew and watch the birds at the feeders at the same time. I also iron on the dining room table. I use a small tabletop ironing board. My cutting table is folded up under the stairs when not in use. Small room, but functional.

Oh I have been meaning to take pics of my sewing space for this series! I love that you did it!

I sew in our dining room too. We live in a 2-bedroom apartment in a 1916 duplex in Seattle, so there is no extra room, studio space or empty side garage for me to use for spreading out fabrics and craft materials. Instead, I set up on our small dining room table at the center of our apartment.

There is a built-in hutch that stocks all my fabrics and notions instead of china. When I'm not using it, my sewing machine stays hidden on a little magazine table in a corner. When folded, my ironing table lives in the nook on the side of the fridge in the kitchen. It's sometimes overwhelming to have to put everything away every single day, but I do love being in the center of everything while sewing. The dining room is practically one room with the living room where the kids usually play when we're inside, so we are all right there together.

For years I sewed in the dining room, and had to put everything away in order to have dinner! Now we have a spare bedroom in our condo that I use for my 'office' - computer, sewing machine etc. It has an attached bath which is where the washer/dryer is located, and I iron in there. With the ironing board up, you can barely move. The bathroom is so small. There's a rather large closet where I have clear plastic boxes full of fabric, and we have built in cabinets in the hallway where I keep thread, buttons and yarn for knitting. I have a folding cutting table that's the correct height if you are standing (that I got at JoAnn Fabrics) that I can fold up and roll into corner when not in use. This room could be used for extra guest room if we had to.

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