Vanity and necessity

A CHRISTMAS present from son-in-law Darren consisted of a tea-towel with the image of my first novel, Gorgon Times. I have subsequently discovered that even techno-idiots can perform this act online and have two more towels devoted to Out of Arizona and Opening Bars.

To have displayed these artefacts on the ground floor would have seemed crass. But how about doors on the upper landing? Here are two (the pic in between is a print of a Robert Motherwell's painting, Je t'Aime.). Surely a fairly modest act of vanity?

ATTACHING toilet seats - a job that's irritated the Hell out of me ever since I became a home owner.

The hinge system has a basic flaw: a headless screw which screws into what is, in effect, a blind "nut" mounted on a brass plate.

Because the "nut" is blind one may only rotate the screw two or three full turns and that's it. It's inherently insecure. This becomes apparent when one screws a nut to the other end of the headless screw to secure the hinge to the toilet pan. It's fatally easy to unscrew the end attached to the blind "nut".

Yes, I understand the principle of adding another nut to give a locking action. But this depends on tightening the second nut without engaging the first nut. I have presently achieved temporary security by adding a third nut.

Question 1. How about a squirt of super-glue into the blind "nut" before tighting up the headless screw?

Question 2. I believe there are alternative attachment systems although they are not typically fitted to new toilet seats. Are these any good?

Into the unknown

For as long as they've been apparent I've loathed smartphones (especially Iphones). There are other reasons but I hate the way they invalidate conversation: an impasse occurs and instead of trying to work out the solution via communal reasoning, someone looks up the answer. Seemingly unaware that disconnected facts are quite different from intelligence. And lo, we know the exact height of the Eiffel Tower!

But I'm a reasoning being and I know I must eventually buy a smartphone. I live in an isolated city, Hereford. The ethos is agricultural, the speed of thought glacial, the white heat of technology is nothing more than a dull glow. Yet new, presumably expensive, systems have been installed in the multi-storey car-park and they allow for payment by smartphone. Good idea: coins are such a nuisance. If dull old Hereford feels the need I must ensure I am neither duller nor older than my neighbours.

Another point. Our family found itself sitting on the first-floor of a fish restaurant in Bouzigues, France. Yet the day's specials appeared only on a chalk-board downstairs. Zach was despatched with a smartphone to photograph the board and I, for one, ordered turbot.

Despite being comfortably off, I loathed smartphones because of their capital and operational costs and the sheeplike willingness of many to accept these gross outgoings. Yet daughter Occasional Speeder and grandson Ian held hands with me and revealed I could buy a smartphone for £90 (half that if I wished) and experiment with pay-as-you-go at about £10 a month.

There are other benefits including a real-time display of operational expenditure. I will not watch movies or telly, nor join Facebook, nor – God forbid! – Twitter. Perhaps I risk being corrupted; well, I’ve always stood firm against Murdoch’s Sky.

The dead cert

I was desperate to leave the North; girls wouldn't take me seriously there.

Leaving the North meant moving to London. I needed London's magic to rub off on me; I wanted to drink a pint at The Cogers, just off Fleet Street, and say - though not so metaphorically - I have cut the umbilical cord.

I applied for many jobs, some rubbishy, some clearly with no future. During National Service I'd learned electronics so here I was, in a room overlooking Tottenham Court Road, ready to give my all to the publicity department of Mullards. Mullards made thermionic valves, glassy tubes that used to glow inside old radios and TV sets. Soon to be replaced by transistors.

My interviewer was a tubby bald man who spoke with great deliberation. He appeared to be following a memorised agenda, proffering questions rather than posing them. The atmosphere was soporific. A few questions in, he opened a drawer in his side of the desk and took out a packet of cigarettes. Did I care to smoke?

I didn't smoke, never had. My northern lungs you know. But that wasn't the point. His gesture was clearly planned and my response would be noted. Conceivably we would light up and the interview would become more relaxed. Whatever, I declined and he slowly returned the packet to the drawer. Clearly he didn't smoke either.

I felt sure I'd got the job. I knew thermionic valves and I didn't depend on cigarettes.

I was appalled when I received a letter regretting this and that. Weeks later I was offered a much better job and the great London adventure began.

But Mullards rankled. The fools turned down the perfect applicant. This occurred in 1959 aeons ago. I don't believe Mullards still exists.

Invisible milestones

ONE OF LIFE'S OBLIGATIONS It's 06.20, nearly time to get up. My Longines sitting on my bedside chest-of-drawers says so and my Longines is never wrong. My Longines cost a fortune, a gift from VR thirty or forty years ago; its clear face and needle-sharp hands tell Swiss truth.

I reach over to put it on and I know - sinkingly - something's wrong. A familiar wrongness which has happened perhaps a dozen times. Sweat from my wrist has rotted the stitching of the strap and the buckle is now detached. The penalty of wearing a leather strap. But, alas, there is no alternative.

Once I substituted a plastic strap which lasted longer. But brother Nick, now in a rest home, his mind adrift with Alzheimer's, told me the watch was too good for plastic and I immediately agreed.

A metal strap? Sixty years ago a sub-editor on the newspaper that employed me as a tea-boy said metal straps were "a mark of the beast". I immediately agreed with him, too.

Leather straps cost £20 a pop. I can afford that and must. VR and Nick deserve it; I'm reminded of them both when I tell the time. Which is now 07.06.

FRENCH BIGGIE Another short extract from Proust's A la Recherche. The key is to read it slowly because it, like the Longines, is concerned with time. Time cannot be hurried.

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be, I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station, the path that he followed being fixed for ever...

Oughties. Worth a damn? No. 6

THE BRAKE BROKEN Shortish short story (946 words)

She made it easier than he’d any right to expect.

She came into his office quickly, a bright look on her face. Took both his hands  and said, “Frank, please, please don’t apologise. It wasn’t even a shock. Once Space went belly-up the contract was finished. I was last on to the shop-floor, so I’m first out.”

A saw cutting twelve-millimetre tubing went wee-oo-er.

He gestured her to the chair, its straw guts showing. “You worked your own ticket, Terri. You deserved better.”

“Worked my own ticket! I travelled first bloody class! You didn’t even know I was sane when you took me on. An act of charity. A horrible gamble. You taught me the press brake when I didn’t know press brakes from a hole in the ground. And you were so patient. All that five-mil sheet I wasted.”

“Sold for scrap,” he said, then laughed at her liveliness. “I hated what the courts were doing to mothers back then. Jailing them, for Christ’s sake. Their babies dead. I suppose you eased my conscience. Mind you, I wasn’t all that certain press brakes were a feminist gesture.”

She was indignant. “They’re the ultimate gesture. A free pass to the lion’s den. All those glowering males.”

“Well, you had the last laugh. You learned quickly. And not just press brakes, either.” He leant forward across a desk strewn with invoices and quotations, many black-thumbed. “One thing pleases me. Any fabricator with a vacancy would be pleased to hire you.”

“That’s why Terri’s such a useful name,” she said, giggling conspiratorially. “I could be a chap.”

Now he looked at her as a woman rather than an ex-employee. “Not so sure there.” Took in the skin-tight jeans, the breast curves over the tee-shirt. The cleanness! How did she stay clean working with metal? “I did you one favour. Forcing you to put your hair in a bun. That’s a very sexy hairdo.”

“Now you tell me.” She picked up a Tesco bag she’d brought in. “There’s these.”

He made space on the desk and  received two sets of overalls, a vernier gauge, the little toolkit he’d bought her, two pairs of industrial rubber gloves. “Keep ‘em,” he said. “Certainly the overalls. You unpicked them so they’d fit more snugly. I wouldn’t like anyone else wearing them.”

Suddenly he didn’t want to prolong things; felt he was in danger of showing his feelings. He handed over the paperwork with the cheque in a separate envelope. “Two months’ pay,” he muttered, slightly embarrassed. “It’s all I can run to. But I’m sure you won’t need it. You’re employable, Terri. Anyone that thinks you aren’t, have them call me. And don’t be scared of CA systems. Just a morning, that’s all you need. A month and you’ll be programming the damn things.”

He stood up rather too abruptly, stuck out his hand. She rose more gracefully. “Don’t be such a damned Brit, Frank. We can do better than that.”

The desk wasn’t the barrier he’d imagined. Being kissed across it was shockingly arousing as she arched her body forward.

When the door closed behind her he needed time to himself. It was some moments before he realised he was still standing, that he had to instruct himself to sit down. Lunchtime came but his sandwiches stayed untouched. An hour before he’d glanced through the window overlooking the workshop – just between the Favourite Tractors calendar and an imperial-metric conversion chart – a view that took in half the press brake. The machine was unmanned.

He was like a ghost the rest of the week. Unrelated to the world around him. On Friday he decided to resume his routines and called Beryl, as normal, asking if she’d like a drink or two at the British Legion. They sat together, she a widow, he a widower, an asymmetry that the passage of time might resolve. He forced himself to chat but it wasn’t working. She said comfortably, uncomplainingly, “I half-promised my niece I’d take over her baby-sitting.”

“Sorry I’m such a dead weight. I’ll drive you where you need to go. But we’ll go via the workshop. I’ll pick up my laptop.

Not wanting to open the car-park gates he parked on the road. Approaching the flat-roofed building he saw the door was ajar. Spotted a flash of light from within. His office door was wide open.

The laptop stood on the floor beside her. She squatted, her legs nicely angled, working the dial on the small floor safe. He’d made no sound but she sensed him. Turned with a wintry look.

“It’s Friday,” she said, “you take Beryl out on Fridays.”

“I bore her, it seems.”

“I wish to hell this hadn’t happened.”

He nodded. “Two months’ pay wasn’t enough, then?”

“All gone. Paying off debts. My ex left me screwed.”

“You don’t need this. You’re employable.” He paused. “Also, fabrication’s a man’s world. Chances are you’ll find another impressionable manager like me.”

“Not like you, Frank.”

He shrugged. She said, “I wanted this to be an anonymous robbery. I need the money and you were all I could think of. Now you and the money are in hell. Even worse, you won’t call the police.”

“I won’t?”

“Not the way you feel. Whereas I… no, I’d never convince you. I could prove it, of course. Cut my throat. Stick my head in the milling machine. Futile.” Her expression was still wintry, quite hopeless. “But I’d do it, kill two birds. Prove the point, solve the problem. You’re a decisive man, Frank. Guide me.”

“The combination’s 26-53-74-19.”

“Shit, Frank, is that good news or bad news?”

“You’re pretty clever. Work it out.”

International conspiracy

Printers irritate the hell out of me. The economics are such they could be given away free since extortionate cartridge costs quickly match the printer’s purchase price. What my mother called "a ramp" and I, youthfully, "a swizz". A con.

I am publicising a show by VR's painting group. My Canon printer plays up; a repair would exceed the £80 cost price. Worse, a dozen unused cartridges will go to waste. The sense of being defrauded combined with an  attack of blepharitis, a corn that comes and goes on my left  foot, and the side-effects of bronchiectasis, now designated  as chronic, cause me to rail against dark forces. And, come to think of it, the forces of light.

The Hewlett-Packard replacement has touch-screen controls instead of buttons. Whoopee, oh whoopee! Said ironically. A warning on the box says it lacks a USB cable without which it won't work. The cable, a paltry thing. costs £13, causing me to rail some more. I feel like Monty Python's little man in the off-licence. The HP is, however, better designed; I no longer need pianist's fingers. Within minutes I'm trucking.

That was twenty-four hours ago. The HP crouches, 50 cm away, and my resentment is starting to fade. It's just a thing. I'll never love it but it does a job. I bought it with my credit card and that's good; it didn't cost me real money.

WIP Hand Signals
Francine went straight to Roger's most worryng patient, a splenectomy who might have picked up an infection. Temperature up slightly, passed a poor night, winced slightly  as she ran a gentle finger over his dressing.

“How're you feeling Mr Daley?” she asked.

“I'm scared,” he said. “Should I be?”

“There's nothing scary as such...”

“All surgery's a risk,” said Daley fatalistically.
 

Not available at bijouteries

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning belongs to a cluster of British films in the sixties aimed at proving if you took a scalpel to the tripes of a member of the working class what spilled out was remarkably similar to that which would have emerged had the unfortunate Celia Johnson been subjected to the same process. That people who were paid for making things had lives, loves and a tendency to procreate. Unfortunately the movie also encouraged directors to believe that projectile vomiting is a facinating cinematic event, something we - as moviegoers - are still suffering from.

All of which is a long-winded way of introducing SNASM's opening scene in which the central character, working at a lathe in a bicycle factory, tosses yet another finished bottom-bracket spindle into a box pallet. The key word being "finished" and the implication is that Barrett Bonden is back, albeit only briefly.

Metal enters a factory in rough form - typically as sheet, billets or castings - is subjected to various types of cutting and exits in a much smoother form. Why? Because these smooth bits will eventually be assembled into a moving mechanical system and their smoothness is an aid to more efficient movement.

And now I'm getting to the point. Smoothed metal can be  pretty. The aforementioned spindle (see pic) is deceptively simple: mounted on a nicely carpentered wood stand it could stay your eye. As could the bearing race (which looks almost like a coronet). Enhanced by a black velvet background and carefully positioned spotlights so might the crankshaft.

I'm not such a damn fool as to say these objects are art. Simply that devices created to fulfil specific engineering tasks may be pleasing to look at. Form follows function. But you knew all that, didn't you?

It's starting to grow up

POP EXPLORED. Part five. Enough Christmas Mozart; time to excavate youth’s psyche. Positive things to say about these three.

Machine. There but for the grace of God go I. (rec. Grandson Ian). But for the soul-destroying bump-bump drumming this would be an engaging song with singers who have audible characters, coherent lyrics going somewhere, a complex tune and – goodness! – choruses. Genuine musical/structural skills, singing propelled by the beat (elsewhere, often not the case), and roots in jazz’s periphery.

Now they gotta split because the Bronx isn’t fit
For a kid to grow up in.
Let’s find a place they say, somewhere far away,
With no blacks, no Jews, no gays.

Leonard Cohen. Hallelujah. Never heard him before but felt I knew the tune. Possible defect (but not for me) is it’s perhaps too well organised, not least the way the verse cleverly grows from monotone Sprechstimme into repeated melodic refrain of title. Then dares to do it again. Includes extremely professional eight-bar organ solo done at high speed. Microphone persona well studied with the rakishly angled trilby and the left fist clenched as if from arthritis. Lyrics audible but unexceptional; some kind of emotional failure deliberately understated, I assume. Hurray for the oldie!

The Smiths. How soon is now? (rec. Professional Bleeder – says it’s her favourite). A synthesised wobble-board, later tricked out with bell textures, provides the background. Usual dull drumming. Pleasingly masculine rather than androgynous, twittery voices. Lasts 6 min. 48 seconds but lyric fragmentation means much of track is instrumental. Quite literate lyrics easily misunderstood: I am the Sun, and the Air turns out to be:

I am the son, and the heir,
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar,
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular.