Here’s a techno-disaster which met its original aim but left me diminished.
In the early sixties I was poor and living in expensive London. Inevitably I was condemned to a record player rather than hi-fi separates. The tiny loudspeaker reacted to certain mid-range horn notes from a Dennis Brain LP with a frying noise which drove me mad. I decided to build a wooden enclosure as host to a proper 10 in. Goodmans speaker.
The enclosure was a metre wide which required a lot of chipboard and the insertion of many 2½-in. screws. At least I pre-drilled the screwholes but parsimony restricted me to the widest bit that came with the drill. It wasn’t wide enough and I compensated with much muscular screw-drivering.
When do you decide that a progressively painful activity has become unbearable? The palm of my hand reddened, became sore, became blistered, became burst-blistered, became raw meat. I soldiered on driven, as always with DIY projects, by a desire to see the job finished. The pain became a pink mist. Afterwards the speaker system worked well but the evidence of my self-harm endured for almost a year. No one to blame but myself.
Moral 1: Ignore my counsel regarding DIY.
Moral 2: This may be sexist but I can’t imagine any woman of my acquaintance having to make a similar confession.
In the early sixties I was poor and living in expensive London. Inevitably I was condemned to a record player rather than hi-fi separates. The tiny loudspeaker reacted to certain mid-range horn notes from a Dennis Brain LP with a frying noise which drove me mad. I decided to build a wooden enclosure as host to a proper 10 in. Goodmans speaker.
The enclosure was a metre wide which required a lot of chipboard and the insertion of many 2½-in. screws. At least I pre-drilled the screwholes but parsimony restricted me to the widest bit that came with the drill. It wasn’t wide enough and I compensated with much muscular screw-drivering.
When do you decide that a progressively painful activity has become unbearable? The palm of my hand reddened, became sore, became blistered, became burst-blistered, became raw meat. I soldiered on driven, as always with DIY projects, by a desire to see the job finished. The pain became a pink mist. Afterwards the speaker system worked well but the evidence of my self-harm endured for almost a year. No one to blame but myself.
Moral 1: Ignore my counsel regarding DIY.
Moral 2: This may be sexist but I can’t imagine any woman of my acquaintance having to make a similar confession.
MOTORBIKE QUERY On a fastish bike the hands are the most thermally vulnerable part of the body. I never solved this. Has the passage of time and improved technology provided an answer?
