Tony

Tony founded The Rocking Horse Shop in East Yorkshire and ran it for 45 years.

His son Sam died following a rock climbing accident in Australia in 2000.

“For me, the best bit is making things. The many aesthetic and technical problems that arise when you’re trying to design something and make it work - I love all that.

The actual business of running a business is an awful hassle. More rules and regulations all the time. Tick-box agendas drove me mad.

But when you’re in the midst of trying to create something, when you get totally involved in what you’re doing…nothing else matters. Nothing else impinges. You don’t want to be disturbed at all.

That kind of totally focused, creative effort. It becomes pretty much unconscious.

I was at sea, then I came ashore to go to teacher training college. Maths was the only vaguely academic subject I knew anything about.

I’d only been there a few days when my friend said, “You’re wasting your time, Tony. You’re an artist. Art is where the fun happens.” So I transferred.

It was a marvellous department. We spent time in every area: ceramic, printmaking, painting, textiles, drawing, 3D.

That’s where I started carving. I made a rocking horse for my final year project and kept doing it for the next 45 years.

Sam had grown up with my sea stories. He went to sea too and qualified as an officer but he left to go travelling.

I encouraged it. That’s part of the guilt you feel.

He met up with our eldest daughter, Kate, in Australia. Then we bought Lynn, our youngest, a plane ticket as a present for doing well in her GCSEs.

Sam had a van. They went swimming with sharks and manta rays. The three of them had this lovely last summer together.

Of course, climbing’s risky. But that’s one of the things that makes it so wonderful when it goes right.

I’ve been close to dying. Once, when I was paragliding a year or so before Sam died, I fell 500 metres. I walked away without a scratch. I’ve sometimes thought surviving that a curse.

Some people want to wrap their children up in cotton wool. We’ve had the odd issue with rocking horses that have been considered too dangerous.

But it seems to me that all the things that make life worthwhile involve risk.

There are lots of different styles ands sizes.

Then you personalise it. The wood, the kind of paintwork. The colour for the leatherwork. There’ll often be an engraved brass plate. We’ve had people bring hair from their own real horse to weave in.

Sometimes we put items inside. With an old horse, we might say, “Have you thought about including some photos or a letter…?” The body is essentially a hollow space. It’s like a time capsule.

And that’s one of the beautiful things about a rocking horse: it never dies. It gets old and tatty. The joints might fall apart, the hair comes out.

Then it goes to the restorer and it gets a new lease of life. Part of the attraction is making something to be enjoyed for generations to come. Something to endure.

It’s a version of immortality, I suppose.”