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This (mechanical) life
I never was any good at things mechanical, be it basic woodwork, tinkering with motors - anything with moving parts, really - or practical things like joining two pieces of rope together. I am black-thumbed in the garden and all thumbs elsewhere.
In spite of dib-dib-dobbing away in Boy Scouts for a couple of years, I'm sure I only got my badges because Akela's bifocals were fogged, or he didn't have them on at all.
How many of us - in our young and not-so-young days - curiously pulled the innards from the family alarm clock or radio, carefully placed each piece down in the order in which it came out, reversed the procedure on rebuilding only to find a cog or screw or nut which apparently had no place to go.
It was, of course, the one bloody bit which prevented the device from ever working again or - these days - a flat-pack item being fully assembled.
At boarding school, in the woodwork shop, I loved to hammer and chisel away, throwing sawdust over my classmates and envisioning a creation which I could proudly send home to my dad to partially justify the expense of private education.
Alas, in spite of copious quantities of glue and filler, my dovetails never did joint and the edges of my pencil cases, serving trays and boot polish boxes always gaped.
Metalwork? Forget it! I fainted from fumes. Sliced fingers on metal shavings. Used left-cutting snips when I needed a curve to the right. Dripped solder into my shoes, burning my feet but more so my socks onto which were sewn my laundry number so as to be easily matched with my other clothes on collection day ... and so the seamstress knew whose account to clip the darning bill to.
In the final exam, my point-scoring galvo dustpan all but fell apart at the seams. I admitted total defeat, feigned earache and strolled cheerfully down to the dorm, a great weight having been lifted from my shoulders.
I never was any good at things mechanical, be it basic woodwork, tinkering with motors - anything with moving parts, really - or practical things like joining two pieces of rope together. I am black-thumbed in the garden and all thumbs elsewhere.
In spite of dib-dib-dobbing away in Boy Scouts for a couple of years, I'm sure I only got my badges because Akela's bifocals were fogged, or he didn't have them on at all.
How many of us - in our young and not-so-young days - curiously pulled the innards from the family alarm clock or radio, carefully placed each piece down in the order in which it came out, reversed the procedure on rebuilding only to find a cog or screw or nut which apparently had no place to go.
It was, of course, the one bloody bit which prevented the device from ever working again or - these days - a flat-pack item being fully assembled.
At boarding school, in the woodwork shop, I loved to hammer and chisel away, throwing sawdust over my classmates and envisioning a creation which I could proudly send home to my dad to partially justify the expense of private education.
Alas, in spite of copious quantities of glue and filler, my dovetails never did joint and the edges of my pencil cases, serving trays and boot polish boxes always gaped.
Metalwork? Forget it! I fainted from fumes. Sliced fingers on metal shavings. Used left-cutting snips when I needed a curve to the right. Dripped solder into my shoes, burning my feet but more so my socks onto which were sewn my laundry number so as to be easily matched with my other clothes on collection day ... and so the seamstress knew whose account to clip the darning bill to.
In the final exam, my point-scoring galvo dustpan all but fell apart at the seams. I admitted total defeat, feigned earache and strolled cheerfully down to the dorm, a great weight having been lifted from my shoulders.
I recalled this years later when I got a job as a floorboy with an engineering and metal firm. "Ve'll make you a velder," said the boss, of German origin.
And the place had machines which could veld anything - steel, aluminium, iron, brass, copper and even clay plumbing pipe! Well, that's what the blokes told me at smoko. Machines which took one rod at a time. machines with continuous feeders which, when set up correctly, allowed a velder to run a line across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and back without stopping to reload.
When set up correctly ... there's the rub. Velding units are finicky things.
I only once touched a velding device and that was after three or four months of sweeping greasy floors, polishing urinals, nearly losing fingers in 12-foot high guillotines which bent half-inch steel plate like plastic, and crawling 30 feet in thin-sheeted, 18-inch square air-conditioning ducts held on to nine foot ceilings only by pop-riveted straps because a tradesman had "accidentally left me pliers behind". Yeah, right, mate!
Practical jokes on floorboys were endless. The apprentices, being one up from us and dying to dish back the dirt they copped from the tradies, fiddled with my velding unit's controls and the rod stuck to the job I was working on. I froze, like the rod. It wasn't an important job but my first with a velder and I wanted to make it at least passable.
I surreptitiously looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching but everyone was huddled over their jobs, apparently engrossed in their work.I tugged at the now-cold velding rod for what seemed like hours.
I kicked it. I swore at it. I even touched it gently, hoping the rod would fall off of its own accord. After a few minutes, the clued-up staff burst into laughter. It was a great joke … and I was the butt of it. Ha bloody ha!
I was so steamed up I reckon I could have velded that job with my finger. I walked up to the boss and quit, quietly. "But I vant to make you a velder," he pleaded. I was tempted beyond all reason to tell him what he could do with his velding rods, but didn't. Looking back now, I wish I had.
And the place had machines which could veld anything - steel, aluminium, iron, brass, copper and even clay plumbing pipe! Well, that's what the blokes told me at smoko. Machines which took one rod at a time. machines with continuous feeders which, when set up correctly, allowed a velder to run a line across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and back without stopping to reload.
When set up correctly ... there's the rub. Velding units are finicky things.
I only once touched a velding device and that was after three or four months of sweeping greasy floors, polishing urinals, nearly losing fingers in 12-foot high guillotines which bent half-inch steel plate like plastic, and crawling 30 feet in thin-sheeted, 18-inch square air-conditioning ducts held on to nine foot ceilings only by pop-riveted straps because a tradesman had "accidentally left me pliers behind". Yeah, right, mate!
Practical jokes on floorboys were endless. The apprentices, being one up from us and dying to dish back the dirt they copped from the tradies, fiddled with my velding unit's controls and the rod stuck to the job I was working on. I froze, like the rod. It wasn't an important job but my first with a velder and I wanted to make it at least passable.
I surreptitiously looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching but everyone was huddled over their jobs, apparently engrossed in their work.I tugged at the now-cold velding rod for what seemed like hours.
I kicked it. I swore at it. I even touched it gently, hoping the rod would fall off of its own accord. After a few minutes, the clued-up staff burst into laughter. It was a great joke … and I was the butt of it. Ha bloody ha!
I was so steamed up I reckon I could have velded that job with my finger. I walked up to the boss and quit, quietly. "But I vant to make you a velder," he pleaded. I was tempted beyond all reason to tell him what he could do with his velding rods, but didn't. Looking back now, I wish I had.
To the non-mechanically minded, the advent of the motor car must be the ultimate frustration.
For me, a car that breaks down vehicle is a disaster ... and I’m the disaster! If the car stops or won't start, I go through the basic checklist ... battery, water, plugs, lights, boot latch, cigarette lighter, kick the tyres. After that I'm completely baffled.
Once, just before dark on the Flinders Highway and miles from nowhere, the Corolla gradually came to a halt. I looked at just about everything. The killer was that the engine was still running and I couldn't why the car wouldn't move.
With a bicycle, it's a simple matter of slipping the chain back on the cogs and getting the legs pumping again. Not so the auto. I eventually spotted the frayed accelerator cable which had snapped just short wherever it is it
joins. Try as I did, I couldn't get the bloody thing to join.
In sheer frustration I kicked the side panel of the car and dented it. This made me even madder. I reefed a hubcap off jumped on it a few times, swore profusely and hurled it as far as I could into the bush, never to be found again.
I hadn't seen my woman for weeks and wasn't so much late for a date as hot to trot so I flagged down the next bloke driving by and cadged a 60-mile ride her place, leaving the Corolla in the middle of nowhere. It was not my car (Am I forgiven yet, Paul?)
Another time, travelling between Charters Towers and Townsville around midnight, my own car's engine suddenly went dead, dowsing the headlights. I steered into the inky blackness and it took many anxious yards slip-sliding in loose-gravel on the shoulder before the car stopped.
As I was to find out, to my horror, I was stuck in a detour curving down through a creek bed, a blindspot for traffic coming the other way. I had no torch, candle or even matches - unusual for a smoker. I struggled to find the fault, going over and over my routine for about 10 minutes not having a clue what I was looking for.
A Mt Isa-bound train started crossing the nearby bridge and in the few seconds that its bright beam shone under the bonnet I saw a battery lead had fallen off.
Relieved, I jumped in and hit the ignition, getting the lights on just as a bloody big B double semi came belting down the detour, swerving just in time to avoid pulping both the car and me. I could have done with a cigarette ... and a change of trousers.
For me, a car that breaks down vehicle is a disaster ... and I’m the disaster! If the car stops or won't start, I go through the basic checklist ... battery, water, plugs, lights, boot latch, cigarette lighter, kick the tyres. After that I'm completely baffled.
Once, just before dark on the Flinders Highway and miles from nowhere, the Corolla gradually came to a halt. I looked at just about everything. The killer was that the engine was still running and I couldn't why the car wouldn't move.
With a bicycle, it's a simple matter of slipping the chain back on the cogs and getting the legs pumping again. Not so the auto. I eventually spotted the frayed accelerator cable which had snapped just short wherever it is it
joins. Try as I did, I couldn't get the bloody thing to join.
In sheer frustration I kicked the side panel of the car and dented it. This made me even madder. I reefed a hubcap off jumped on it a few times, swore profusely and hurled it as far as I could into the bush, never to be found again.
I hadn't seen my woman for weeks and wasn't so much late for a date as hot to trot so I flagged down the next bloke driving by and cadged a 60-mile ride her place, leaving the Corolla in the middle of nowhere. It was not my car (Am I forgiven yet, Paul?)
Another time, travelling between Charters Towers and Townsville around midnight, my own car's engine suddenly went dead, dowsing the headlights. I steered into the inky blackness and it took many anxious yards slip-sliding in loose-gravel on the shoulder before the car stopped.
As I was to find out, to my horror, I was stuck in a detour curving down through a creek bed, a blindspot for traffic coming the other way. I had no torch, candle or even matches - unusual for a smoker. I struggled to find the fault, going over and over my routine for about 10 minutes not having a clue what I was looking for.
A Mt Isa-bound train started crossing the nearby bridge and in the few seconds that its bright beam shone under the bonnet I saw a battery lead had fallen off.
Relieved, I jumped in and hit the ignition, getting the lights on just as a bloody big B double semi came belting down the detour, swerving just in time to avoid pulping both the car and me. I could have done with a cigarette ... and a change of trousers.
Fishing? Forget it!
On the home front it's just as bad with power tools my worst enemy. While renovating a room I managed to stick two fingers into an electric saw before it had stopped. I was lucky. A few stitches and my fingers are still there.
I was given orbital sander for my birthday one September. I finally used it in November and then had a devil of a time trying to replace the abrasive paper, cheap bodgie-sized stuff because I could not seem to find the "as recommended" product. For years it sat sandless on the shelf.
Washers fitted by me make the taps leak worse than before (if I can get them back together), one replaced fuse with the wrong amperage blows the whole house circuit, mower blades come dangerously loose, wet-areas remain unsealed while my hands are permanently waterproofed, shoes, hammers and fingerprints are super-glued randomly around the shed, hung mirrors fall and break - hence my life is driven by cycles of seven to the nth - and my wish-washy wallpapering usually slides slowly and sadly to the floor.
Tens of thousands of clever people, handyfolk and do-it-yourselfers throughout the country kill the need for qualified workers - and ultimately the community economy - by doing their own plumbing and painting, their own tuning and oil changes, laying concrete paths, erecting fences and adding verandahs.
This might save them some money - or for people like me, costs them heaps! - but what they spend supports the manufacturing moguls and hardware chains, not the tradespeople in the next street or next suburb.
I gave up the cause long ago, now calling on the services of local blokes and smaller enterprises.
They get on with what they do best while I sit out of harm's - and their - way sipping a beer and watching the footy or cricket secure in the knowledge that my payment helps keep them in business and maybe even enables them to employ and train apprentices.
And I'll bet small business operators all around the country wish there were more dunderheads and butterfingers like me around the ridges.
*C IAN McDOUGALL 1998
I was given orbital sander for my birthday one September. I finally used it in November and then had a devil of a time trying to replace the abrasive paper, cheap bodgie-sized stuff because I could not seem to find the "as recommended" product. For years it sat sandless on the shelf.
Washers fitted by me make the taps leak worse than before (if I can get them back together), one replaced fuse with the wrong amperage blows the whole house circuit, mower blades come dangerously loose, wet-areas remain unsealed while my hands are permanently waterproofed, shoes, hammers and fingerprints are super-glued randomly around the shed, hung mirrors fall and break - hence my life is driven by cycles of seven to the nth - and my wish-washy wallpapering usually slides slowly and sadly to the floor.
Tens of thousands of clever people, handyfolk and do-it-yourselfers throughout the country kill the need for qualified workers - and ultimately the community economy - by doing their own plumbing and painting, their own tuning and oil changes, laying concrete paths, erecting fences and adding verandahs.
This might save them some money - or for people like me, costs them heaps! - but what they spend supports the manufacturing moguls and hardware chains, not the tradespeople in the next street or next suburb.
I gave up the cause long ago, now calling on the services of local blokes and smaller enterprises.
They get on with what they do best while I sit out of harm's - and their - way sipping a beer and watching the footy or cricket secure in the knowledge that my payment helps keep them in business and maybe even enables them to employ and train apprentices.
And I'll bet small business operators all around the country wish there were more dunderheads and butterfingers like me around the ridges.
*C IAN McDOUGALL 1998
