Screw
it Yourself
By
Dominic Horton
To
say that my DIY skills are not the greatest would be an
understatement akin to comparing the forthright Pirate to Coronation
Street's dithering Mavis Riley. So my challenge this week of
assembling a flat pack desk and office chair was a daunting and
arduous one for me to say the least.
 |
| Flatpack Assembly, by request of Toby In-Tents |
Things
started badly on Monday night when a burst of enthusiasm lead me to
finally open the flat pack boxes only to find that both a flat-head
and a Phillips screwdriver are required for the procedure, neither of
which I have in my “tool box” which is an old ash tray sparsely
populated by a tape measure that the Mexican gave me, a hammer that I
acquired somewhere along the line and a few screws and old batteries.
Prior to me intrepidly delving into the boxes they had been sitting
in the corner of the room full of latent menace, with me starring at
them at length hoping the self assembly fairy would pop by and do the
business.
I
went on a quest to procure screwdrivers but as DIY is not high on my
list of priorities in life (unlike relaxing in the Flagon &
Gorses) I didn't want to part with too many shekels, so it was off to
the pound shop. I got a bit side tracked looking at the goods in
the shop, especially as I found that they now sell groceries but I
realised that a lot of the food items were more expensive than they
are in the supermarket, so don't be lured folks by the deceiving line
of, “it's only a pound”.
The
recent Queen's Speech informed us that the government are to soon
introduce a 5p charge on plastic bags but I am not sure how this will
go down in Halesowen whose shopkeepers and cashiers are keen plastic
bag enthusiasts; they have a plastic bag ready before you can even
begin to say, “I don't need a bag thank you” and after you have
uttered such astonishing words they become aggrieved at having to
remove the items that you have purchased from the bag. Sometimes
items are placed in a small bag before being put into a secondary
larger bag, like a plastic bag version of a Russian doll.
 |
| The Mastermind Chair |
When
the 5p levy becomes statute and people refuse to pay up it will cause
chaos in the shops of Halesowen as shopkeepers will not be able to
stop their instantaneous reflex action of bagging items. The time
spent un-bagging goods will cause unprecedented delays and queues at
checkouts the town wide. The love of plastic bags must stretch
outside of Halesowen and be borough wide as although Dudley Council
recently issued the residents of Furnace Hill with a black wheelie
bin each for general waste, the accompanying booklet suggests that
waste should first be put into a bin liner or plastic bag before
being deposited in the bin. Which makes one wonder what was the
point of issuing the plastic wheelie bins in the first place.
The
5p surcharge on plastic bags could spell disaster for many of the
poorest people in Britain as given that plastic bags are currently
free they are the only thing that some people can afford to eat.
This week Inequality Briefing (www.inequalitybriefing.org)
reported that the number of people receiving three days or more of
emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks has risen from 26,000
in 2008/9 to 913,000 in 2013/14, which I am sure you agree makes
worrying reading.
 |
| The wonderful stained glass windows in the chancel at St Martin's church, Birmingham |
Before
I entered the pound shop on Wednesday I fortified myself by popping
into the Wetherspoons with the Phantom but as it was first thing in
the morning the fortification came in the form of a hearty breakfast
and not a pint, though I confess to having been tempted with the
latter, especially as Thornbridge Jiapur was being served. I
resisted the lure of the beer pumps but as ever there were plenty of
people enjoying a morning drink. The morning drinkers were
exclusively coffin dodgers or late middle aged and as none of them
had the look of degenerative drinkers I mused on what their routines
are after leaving the pub. After a pint or two their motivation
levels for the remainder of the day must not be at their highest so I
assume that it is a case of back off home for a nap before Bargain
Hunt comes on BBC One at
lunchtime.
The
trip to the pound shop was successful in terms of screwdriver
procurement and for £1 there was a handy little pack containing both
types of screwdrivers that I needed, so at 50 New Pence each I
thought that they were a bargain. Back at Codger Mansions, armed
with the screwdrivers I set about assembling the desk only to find
that the instructions were effectively in pigeon English; they must
have been written by the Baby Faced Assassin at the Rhareli Peking
Chinese takeaway as a side line to supplement his income, in between
serving customers. The instructions read like a script from the
third rate BBC 1970's sitcom Mind Your Language but
the manufacturers of the desk did not offer a thousand apologies in
this regard.
Eventually
like the code breakers of Bletchley Park I began to decipher the
instructions but I was dismayed to learn that the next part of the
operation was a two person job, so being on my own there was only one
thing for it and I had to drag Alfie the teddy bear out of bed to
assist and he was less than HP as he usually likes to spend 24 hours
a day in the sack. Through determination, guesswork and sheer luck
Alfie and I got to within two small screws of completing the job when
the inevitable happened and the pound shop Phillips screwdriver
started to wither. The wear and tear to the highly malleable metal
at the head of the implement rendered it useless. I tried to
complete the job with the flat-head screwdriver but it was useless so
I decided that the two little screws could not be that important and
consigned them to my ash tray tool box. So the chances are that by
the time I finish writing this column the desk will have collapsed
like a house of cards and I will be off down the pound shop again for
another shoddy screwdriver.
Thankfully,
compared to the desk the chair was easy to assemble and it was all
done within a matter of minutes as the makers had the decency to
include an alum key so the annihilated Philips screwdriver was not
required. The mock leather desk chair looks like the one used in
Mastermind so I keep
expecting Magnus Magnusson to pop into the room from the kitchen and
ask if I would like a cup of tea, to which I would answer, “no
thank you ….... in fact on second thoughts, go on then.” Magnus
would be obliged to reply, “Sorry I have to accept your first
answer.”
The
trauma of the flat pack assembly was offset by a visit with the
Mexican the previous day to St Philip's and St. Chad's cathedrals and
St. Paul's and St. Martin's churches in Birmingham, an odd day out
for two self professed atheists, you might think. Having
done some prior research the night before, Mex explained to me that
St Martin's church contained William De Bermingham's effigy, which
is the oldest monument in Birmingham, dating back to 1325. But when
we arrived we found the effigy in a dark, dank part of the church,
covered in dust looking a little unloved. The magnificent stained
glass windows in the chancel showing some of Jesus's miracles more
than made up for the disappointment of the De Bermingham effigy.
Talking
of miracles, the World Cup has now kicked off of course and
inevitably people are asking whether England can win it for the first
time since our victory at Wembley in 1966. Well, if I can put up a
flat pack desk unaided using a substandard pound shop screwdriver
then anything is possible. You think this week's column is all over?
It is now.
©
Dominic Horton, June 2014.
*
EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com
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