Sprockets and Sockets
“You need a flange sprocket for that one.” A conspiratorial look in my direction. A steely nod in return that almost certainly failed to mask the bewilderment. “Then you’ll want an electric socket hammer to push the shankhead nails through. Then lay the new sheets, starting at the bottom and working up. Thirty centimetre overlaps between every panel. The galvanised rubber bungs will keep the rain out for years. Bish bosh, easy job. You could do the lot in three days.”
Ali was grinning at me, knowing that I had not the faintest clue what was being said. Our visiting expert might as well have been speaking in Serbo Croat for all I understood. She wanted to tell him to look at my soft pasty hands, hewn from a lifetime of wearing white shirts at the office, while before us stood a benevolent bearded gorilla of a man, a mixture of dried paint and wood stain all over his jeans and jumper, the result of doing a proper day’s work for a living. We were standing in our leaky garage, inspecting the roof and discussing the best way to keep it watertight this winter. Did we need a new roof, or could we repair this one? All of this was so far removed from anything familiar. What workplace skills I had were entirely limited to counting things and presenting the results to people further up the food chain than me. Whenever the urge seizes me to try a bit of DIY, I lie down in a darkened room and wait for the feeling to pass over. I call it DIwon’t.
We’ve had a sudden run of visitors to the house this summer. All male, all offering their considered wisdom on things that are falling down or need replacing, and all of them speaking in languages that I really don’t understand. The only thing these soft office boy ears hear is white noise when anyone starts talking about sprockets and sockets. There’s the old wooden windows, the collapsing rear porch, the rusting ride on mower with the gammy drive belt, the sycamores that need removing without falling onto the neighbours beehives, the bulging septic tank and the unending saga of the garage roof with the inbuilt shower. Only our plumber is female - and she did such a good job last time that we don’t need her services at the moment. I did fix a leaky tap in the bathroom last year - in fact I did a lap of honour around the garden when it no longer dripped at the fourth attempt to solve the problem. But mostly, I’m worse than useless. The sad and uncomfortable truth is that I need men in overalls to make my life function at moments like these, and I know that sounds wrong on just about every level.
Even a relatively simple task can lead me into a world of pain. Recently, one of our five a side football circle announced he was opening a new coffee stop opposite Redruth railway station, and had invited local artists to bring in their masterpieces. He’d put them on the wall to brighten the place up and sell them on the creative’s behalf. Stupidly, I told him that I do a bit of landscape photography around Cornwall and shared my Instagram feed, and before I knew it I’d agreed to bring some framed prints in. I rapidly chose four local scenes and had them printed, and then I ordered some white frames. Nice looking frames, hopefully robust enough and not very expensive. If I’m going to get a couple of quid out of this I need to remember this is Redruth and not trendy St Ives or Padstein. The people around here don’t take their baths in foaming gallons of champagne, you know. Some of them can barely afford water.
That left the business of assembling my purchases, and now my incomparable incompetence at all matters practical came to the fore. A can of mounting spray arrived from Mr Bezos, who it turned out owed me a tenner because one of the frames had a tiny mark on it. Ali and I watched some YouTube videos and were left bewildered by the multitude of different approaches. How could something that looked so simple be so complicated? In the end we came up with our own method - one which you definitely won’t ever see in the textbook. The mounting spray is supposed to stay “tacky” for five minutes, but it really doesn’t waste any time bonding two surfaces together. The moment we attempted to stick the printed photo to the backing paper along the carefully scored lines that had been made in advance, it broke loose and landed at a far more avant-garde angle, refusing to budge any further. Then there’s the business of trying to keep the inside free of dust, stray moulting hairs and goodness knows whatever else. With a shameful hidden mass of clipped edges hiding beneath the mount, the finished result does at least look like it’s supposed to. I wonder if we’ll have learned anything by the time we’ve completed the first batch. Maybe we need a flange sprocket, whatever that is.
I’m far more comfortable at the scenes of those images. Here’s one from that prototype selection - the only one that wasn’t already on Flickr. No sprockets or sockets required around here. Just a soft handed office boy with a camera and a flask of tea.
Sprockets and Sockets
“You need a flange sprocket for that one.” A conspiratorial look in my direction. A steely nod in return that almost certainly failed to mask the bewilderment. “Then you’ll want an electric socket hammer to push the shankhead nails through. Then lay the new sheets, starting at the bottom and working up. Thirty centimetre overlaps between every panel. The galvanised rubber bungs will keep the rain out for years. Bish bosh, easy job. You could do the lot in three days.”
Ali was grinning at me, knowing that I had not the faintest clue what was being said. Our visiting expert might as well have been speaking in Serbo Croat for all I understood. She wanted to tell him to look at my soft pasty hands, hewn from a lifetime of wearing white shirts at the office, while before us stood a benevolent bearded gorilla of a man, a mixture of dried paint and wood stain all over his jeans and jumper, the result of doing a proper day’s work for a living. We were standing in our leaky garage, inspecting the roof and discussing the best way to keep it watertight this winter. Did we need a new roof, or could we repair this one? All of this was so far removed from anything familiar. What workplace skills I had were entirely limited to counting things and presenting the results to people further up the food chain than me. Whenever the urge seizes me to try a bit of DIY, I lie down in a darkened room and wait for the feeling to pass over. I call it DIwon’t.
We’ve had a sudden run of visitors to the house this summer. All male, all offering their considered wisdom on things that are falling down or need replacing, and all of them speaking in languages that I really don’t understand. The only thing these soft office boy ears hear is white noise when anyone starts talking about sprockets and sockets. There’s the old wooden windows, the collapsing rear porch, the rusting ride on mower with the gammy drive belt, the sycamores that need removing without falling onto the neighbours beehives, the bulging septic tank and the unending saga of the garage roof with the inbuilt shower. Only our plumber is female - and she did such a good job last time that we don’t need her services at the moment. I did fix a leaky tap in the bathroom last year - in fact I did a lap of honour around the garden when it no longer dripped at the fourth attempt to solve the problem. But mostly, I’m worse than useless. The sad and uncomfortable truth is that I need men in overalls to make my life function at moments like these, and I know that sounds wrong on just about every level.
Even a relatively simple task can lead me into a world of pain. Recently, one of our five a side football circle announced he was opening a new coffee stop opposite Redruth railway station, and had invited local artists to bring in their masterpieces. He’d put them on the wall to brighten the place up and sell them on the creative’s behalf. Stupidly, I told him that I do a bit of landscape photography around Cornwall and shared my Instagram feed, and before I knew it I’d agreed to bring some framed prints in. I rapidly chose four local scenes and had them printed, and then I ordered some white frames. Nice looking frames, hopefully robust enough and not very expensive. If I’m going to get a couple of quid out of this I need to remember this is Redruth and not trendy St Ives or Padstein. The people around here don’t take their baths in foaming gallons of champagne, you know. Some of them can barely afford water.
That left the business of assembling my purchases, and now my incomparable incompetence at all matters practical came to the fore. A can of mounting spray arrived from Mr Bezos, who it turned out owed me a tenner because one of the frames had a tiny mark on it. Ali and I watched some YouTube videos and were left bewildered by the multitude of different approaches. How could something that looked so simple be so complicated? In the end we came up with our own method - one which you definitely won’t ever see in the textbook. The mounting spray is supposed to stay “tacky” for five minutes, but it really doesn’t waste any time bonding two surfaces together. The moment we attempted to stick the printed photo to the backing paper along the carefully scored lines that had been made in advance, it broke loose and landed at a far more avant-garde angle, refusing to budge any further. Then there’s the business of trying to keep the inside free of dust, stray moulting hairs and goodness knows whatever else. With a shameful hidden mass of clipped edges hiding beneath the mount, the finished result does at least look like it’s supposed to. I wonder if we’ll have learned anything by the time we’ve completed the first batch. Maybe we need a flange sprocket, whatever that is.
I’m far more comfortable at the scenes of those images. Here’s one from that prototype selection - the only one that wasn’t already on Flickr. No sprockets or sockets required around here. Just a soft handed office boy with a camera and a flask of tea.