Mark Beckett explains how woodturning helped bring him back from the brink of death
Where do I start? Well, I suppose the beginning of this adventure is probably the right place. Way back in the early part of 2018 I was a happy-go-lucky bus driver working in Bristol in the UK, going about my life without a care. I’d been having bouts of illness for a couple of years, and it had gone undiagnosed. Then suddenly one day I was taken ill again and rushed to hospital. During my stay at the hospital the doctors decided I needed to have my gallbladder removed and that’s where it all started to go wrong.
I must point out that at this stage I hadn’t even considered woodturning in any form. I’d done some 20 years previously but only briefly and badly.
My health quickly deteriorated while I was in hospital and eventually I was transferred to another, bigger, hospital and diagnosed with sepsis. I was placed in the ICU and rapidly went downhill. I slipped into a coma and was hooked up to a life support machine. The sepsis evolved into necrotising fasciitis, an organ-dissolving form of sepsis that basically destroys your internal organs. I was given a 5% chance of living and because of that my consultant surgeon decided he would throw out the rule book and perform procedures on me that he would never normally have carried out. Thankfully, his choices saved me from certain death.
So, there I am, hooked up to a machine, in a coma, undergoing multiple surgeries (37 in total), and to top it all I died on the operating table four times due to my heart packing in from the stress. The fasciitis caused my kidneys to fail for four months, took my pancreas, some of my bowel, some of my stomach, a third of my liver, some of my intestine and caused a surgeon to accidentally severe my vagus nerve causing permanent damage down my left side and paralysis of my left larynx, giving me a very breathy and sultry voice.
I went into hospital a very big lad, 24 stone. When I eventually left after almost a year, I weighed 11.5 stone and had lost 85% of my muscle mass. I was barely able to walk and needed a frame to help me get about. I had a reduced swallow capacity and could only ‘eat’ liquid food.
Right, that’s enough of the sob story. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. It happened, I survived, it made me who I am today.
Life is a gift
What it did do, though, was make me realise that life is a gift, and it could be taken from you at any time. So, it’s best to get on with what you’ve got and be grateful for it. I was advised I needed something to help me rehabilitate, something to help me build back strength in my arms and legs, build hand/eye coordination and give me a project that involved problem solving and a start, middle and end. I began looking at YouTube for inspiration. It was here that I stumbled across a video of woodturning by Mike Waldt. I realised it ticked all the boxes. And so my journey began. I knew what I needed to do – I needed to buy a lathe.
To begin with I was just making shavings, you know the sort of stuff. Tealight holders, paper weights, odd-shaped things that looked remotely like ashtrays or maybe, at a stretch, if you squinted, bowls.
Then I started making pens and realised you could be delicate and precise, and the tool control started to come. The pens started selling and I became more confident. That’s when I decided to start a YouTube channel. I wanted to show others in my position that if you were broken or less able somehow (I hate the term disabled) you could still be productive and create beautiful things others could appreciate. It was this decision that introduced me to a community of makers who have been the major driving force in making me who I am today. I’ve made some lifelong friends, been helped countless times, been guided by some of the finest turners and creatives in the world and basically pushed to realise the potential they all said they saw in me, even if I didn’t see it myself.
People heard about this funny sounding guy in the south west who sometimes almost passed out from low blood sugar and started tuning in to see what might happen next. I was doing regular live demonstrations and pre-recorded videos, appearing on other people’s live demos as a panel member, or ‘earworm’ as we are referred to, and was made to feel welcome and appreciated. I was a sponge, I soaked up every tidbit of info I could. I became selective about who I followed and took advice from because I could see that not everyone on YouTube was necessarily worth watching, and started putting into practice all the tips and techniques I was seeing. I learn best from watching and, boy, did that pay off.
Covid lockdown was a silver lining for me. It enabled me to spend 14-18 hours a day beside my lathe, just practising and experimenting on turning with no distractions. I lived in an apartment above my workshop, and I was away from everyone, so all I had was woodturning. I vowed that no matter how rough I felt, every day I’d go downstairs and make something. Even if it was only a mess.
Getting noticed
Doing the videos got me noticed by some, and thankfully they took the time and effort to guide me. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them from the bottom of my heart: Derek Williamson, my first mentor in pen making; Wayne Clasper, fantastic turner, absolute font of knowledge and probably one of my best friends. Ruby Cler, outstanding turner and my current mentor and friend. Emma Cook, Colwin Way, Martin Saban- Smith, Pete Ravenscroft, Glen Lucas, Les Thorne, Richard Findley and Stuart Mortimer. I’ve trained with most of these, followed all of them and at some point I’ve picked their brains for something. Thank you to all and to the too-many-others-to-name for all the help.
I started selling commission work and was getting small jobs from local companies wanting things turned. This increased slowly as the world started to return to some sense of normality. Then someone suggested I should start to do club demonstrations. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a shy, quiet type of guy. I used to be quite happy being the life and soul of a party, but that was before I was given the voice of a very quiet and breathy Julian Clary. I used to have a deep, booming voice with good projection and presence. Doing YouTube I was using a good-quality microphone that enhanced my volume somewhat. Now
I was faced with public speaking while turning, and frankly the thought terrified me. To some extent, it still does, and I believe it always will. But I took it as a challenge and started doing demos. To be able to spread the passion for what I do to others, there’s no feeling like it. And if I can help just one person with some little tip or trick they didn’t know about, that makes me very happy.
This naturally led to me giving lessons to new turners. I discovered people wanted to come to my workshop and pay me to teach them to turn. Me! Can you imagine it? In the mid-90s and early 2000s I actually trained as a teacher of secondary school geography and English literature and then went on to be a successful driving instructor, so the teaching part was no issue. But how lucky was I? This opened my eyes to this becoming a career now, a way to make a living by doing something I love. Time to get serious. I took my tutor assessment, got proper insurance and started to make enquiries about becoming a professional turner. I was guided by Emma Cook, Colwin Way and Andy Pickard along this path and after much hard work I was accepted on to the Register of Professional Turners in December 2022 – a great honour for me and a massive boost to my growing business.
That brings me nicely up to date. I was forced to relocate my workshop and home in late 2023 and am now based in Westward Ho!. Business is growing nicely, word is spreading and lessons are booked months in advance. I’m taking bookings for club demonstrations well into 2025 and production work for design houses, joinery firms and furniture makers is increasing all the time. I’m able to spend time turning artistic pieces for my own retail space and other local shops and my health has improved. Woodturning started as a route to rehabilitation, but it became so much more. In the really dark times when I thought I had nothing else and I started to feel sorry for myself about everything I’d lost, I’d go and make some shavings. Forgetting all my worries.
Woodturning literally saved my life.
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www.youtube.com/@MarkBeckettRPT