Wooden Acting

Those of you that know me, will be aware that this will be my last post for a few weeks. On Thursday next week, I go back to Uni. At 3.30am in the morning. To catch a plane to Lanzarote!!! Woohoo! What for?!?!? I hear you all cry. Well for the first week, we will be doing environmental studies (Oh look, there's a Volcano...). In the second week, the lecturers go home, and we all... er... are allowed to do what we like.

But that is next week. Sunshine, temperatures in the mid 20s (centigrade), and generally better weather than Britain! Onto this week. Again, another fairly slow week, with me watching re-runs of Scrubs, Diagnosis Murder, and other assorted TV gems. This was also the week that NTC started back up! Hooray!! At last some jobs to keep me busy...

On Tuesday, my master-carpenter-wannabe brother asked me to help him repair a door at our Nan's house. The door that he and dad had installed 6 months ago. So well installed, that the door was now sticking. Well I say sticking, when I mean that it was impossible to close the door! The letterbox was also leaking rain water...

I confess, I don't know an awful lot about woodwork, so Ian (brother) loaded up the tools that he wanted to complete the job. He decided to take his car, and go seperatly from me, so that he could buy a letter box cover (to replace the unwanted leaky letterbox). This wasn't a problem, as I had a few things I wanted to do myself.

I arrived before Ian, so I opened up, and awaited him to arrive. Eventually, Ian rolled up twenty minutes later with his 'letter box cover'. We went straight out to the offending door, when master-carpenter Ian said just this 'Ahh.' He looked at the letterbox, then looked at me, and asked if I had a screwdriver, as he forgot to pack one. Fortunatly I did have a screwdriver in my car (equipped with everything is my car), and I started taking apart the letterbox.

Ian then began to attack the door with a large file. For those of you that don't know, that isn't the choice weapon of the master carpenter for this job. I gave him a questioning look. 'Oh, I couldn't be bothered to find the wood plane'. I took the old letter box out, and asked for the letter box cover. Ian brought over this article that, I'll admit, first glance looked like exactly the right thing. Then I held it my hands, and it felt exceptionally light for cast iron, but far too light to be plastic.

I read the box, and my fears were confirmed. Ian had bought a porcelain finger plate (the thing that gets screwed onto a door to push it open). I told Ian this, and his expert suggestion was to 'screw it on anyway'. Brilliant. The porcelain bit might have done the job, but I'm pretty sure the meant-for-indoors screws that were supplied would rust pretty quickly, and rot the wooden door from the inside.

So lets recap. Our master-carpenter has so far managed to forget to bring the right tools, bring completely the wrong tools, and suggest we fit a completely inappropriate fitting. This is the sort of thing that we hear about on programs like Watchdog, and Rogue Traders. After a sulk, and a hissing fit at me, Ian eventually accepts my lowly advice, and goes back to the shop and gets the right thing.

Honestly, I don't know about Master Carpenter. The closest he's going to get to chippy, is by working at Wong's deep fry!

Well that's it from me for a while. I'll be back in three weeks, but until then, you'll be looked after some good friends of mine: Ian Emery, writer of TS Sturdy's 'The Mighty Oak'; and radio star from Southern FM, Michael Gates! Be nice to them, and leave them some nice comments.

Until we meet again...

If you're looking forward to someone else taking over my blog, why not leave a message asking that I stay in Lanzarote, starting your comment with the word 'lost'.

If you don't want me to go, why not leave a comment telling me how much you like my blog, starting your message with the word 'illiterate'.