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I opened my own workshop at forty five, which everybody agreed was the wrong age to start anything. My brother said it kindly. The bank said it less kindly. My accountant said it with a spreadsheet.
That was three years ago. The picture hangs above the bench now, where I can see it from the door.
My first customer is on it. She brought in a chair with a broken back leg and paid me in cash and a jar of honey, and I still have the jar because I never opened it. It is on the shelf on the picture, sealed.
My first tool is on it too, the plane my grandfather used, which is the only thing I own that is older than the building. It is drawn open on the bench, not hanging up, because a tool on a wall is decoration and a tool on a bench is work.
The first invoice is pinned to the board. It took eleven weeks to be paid and I framed the receipt rather than the invoice, because the receipt is the part that actually happened.
The truck outside has the name on the door. I chose that name in a car park at half past six in the morning and I have not changed my mind about it since, which for me is remarkable.
There are seventy chairs stacked behind the workshop and each one is a chair I have repaired, and I asked for exactly seventy because that was the number when I ordered the picture. It is more now. I like that the picture is already out of date.
My dog sits in the doorway where he sits every day and refuses to come further in because of the noise.
The number plate is the day I signed the lease, which was also the day I was most frightened.
On the board above the bench it says the thing my brother said, in his exact words, because it turned out to be useful.