Andy had a breakdown. After years of service and a long career in civil aviation, his body and mind simply couldn’t carry on. For a long time, neither of us could see a way out. I watched the man I love crumble, and all I could do was stay, support him, and hope.
Those months were hard in ways that are difficult to explain unless you’ve lived them. Life shrinks. The future feels distant. You stop planning and start surviving.
Then, one day, Andy went into the garage.
At first, it was just scrap. Bits and pieces other people might have thrown away. There was no plan and no pressure. He simply started making things with his hands.
Slowly, those things began to take shape.
They started to look like robots.
What I noticed first wasn’t the robots themselves, it was Andy. Each time he came back into the house after hours in the garage, carrying another strange little figure, something in him had shifted. He was calmer. More present. Piece by piece, something was repairing itself.
Friends began to comment.
“They’re great,” they said. “You should sell them.”
As the robots appeared, something else happened. I started to hear their stories. I’d always wanted to write, and now these characters seemed to arrive already carrying their own voices.
We called them The Berts, after my great-grandfather Herbert, a man who never threw anything away because it might be useful one day. The name felt right.
Then Andy made a tiny robot, no bigger than a can of beans.
We called him Weebert.
Weebert reminded me of our grandson, who was always saying, “I’m bored!” When children met Weebert and the Berts, their reactions were immediate. They didn’t just listen to the stories, they wanted to know what the robots were made from. Old cameras. Springs. Scrap. They asked questions. They imagined. They created.
That’s when our mission became clear.
We weren’t just making robots or telling stories. We were giving children permission to play, explore, imagine and create.
Just before Christmas, Weebert’s World found its way onto national television on The Jeremy Vine Show. It was a special moment, but it wasn’t the destination. What mattered more was what came afterwards.
Messages began arriving from people we didn’t know. Parents, grandparents and teachers who told us how much it meant to see something handmade on television. How it reminded them of creativity, imagination and making things without rules.
That response has carried us into this next chapter.
We may have started at a kitchen table, but we’re building with intention. Weebert’s World is becoming a children’s world designed for screens, classrooms and homes. A place where creativity comes first and imagination has room to grow.
What began as a way up from rock bottom has become a clear mission: to bring Weebert and the Berts to children’s television and inspire children everywhere to play, explore, imagine and create.
And we’re just getting started.
with love
Lotty x
