Hello from Sheffield and beyond!

Hello from me. I'm one of the Fixers / organizers from the Sheffield Repair Cafes at Heeley City Farm and an upcycling shop just off Abbeydale Road called Strip The Willow. I'm also the webmaster for Sheffield. You can find the website at http://sheffieldrepaircafe.callpress.net

I also pop up as a fixer at Chesterfield and occasionally at Pocklington.

My speciality is fixing and restoring older items. Old dial telephones, paraffin lamps and antique sewing machines are just some of the things that I specialise in. I also run an (almost) weekly webcast on Sunday evenings called Andy's Shed Live, where I tackle all kinds of restoration projects. This came about after lots of questions about telephone restorations and I decided it was easier to make a weelky live stream than type out lots of replies individually. There's also a website at http://andysshed.callpress.net

When I'm not fixing stuff I can also be found at the Sheffield Collectors Club

For my day job I've done quite a few things over time. For many years I was a bus driver before switching to a much happier life as a market stallholder in Chesterfield. Unfortunately though our town centre is dying, which is not in any way helped by some of the decisions made by the local council. So I said goodbye to the town centre in late 2017 to become a professional dog walker. If you're i the Chesterfeild or Sheffield area and want to know more, you can find my dog-walking site here.

Finally there's the book... A few years ago a friend and I noticed that a lot of Sheffield's historic street furniture, particularly the cast iron lamp-posts and drain covers were starting to disappear as part of a controversiol council initiative called 'streets ahead'. So before all the history was lost we decided to write a book about some of it. The result was 'Drainspotting: A Guide To The Pavememnt Features Of Sheffield.' You can find out more about it here.