My dad taught me a lot. These are some of his tools. I have let them go a bit rusty. I keep meaning to clean them up. We had a shed. It was the classic Anderson shelter corrugated iron thing. He had his bench one side and I had a smaller version the other side. We worked back to back. He had screws, nails, nuts and bolts etc in tins. Dried milk tins, Old Holborn and Golden Virginia tins.. These were the days when you picked up a nail off the street and took it home and straightened it and used it. You re-cut the slot in a screw with a hacksaw. Now, hacksawing: "Use the whole of the blade and take it slowly. Let the tool do the work". He called a hammer a 'blow tool'. Pincers, there was a tool with a technique. Some would think they were to cut wire. Others would pull at the nail with all their might but of course my dad told me the right way. Grab the nail as low down as you can and roll the pincers over the workpiece-easy! Then straighten that nail!
Some might be interested to know he worked for Baker Perkins. He was the field engineer. Repair man. Bakeries, laundries, biscuit factories, installing and repairing those giant machines. He would come home with cakes, broken biscuits (pressed shirts!) and stories. He worked at Trebor once. 'Fruit Salad is alright but don't buy Black-Jack. I've seen them sweep up the spillage and put it back in the pot' He taught me a lot, my dad.
6 comments:
I wish my dad had taught me things like that, but he did show me how to chop the head off a chicken with a blunt axe.
My dad was the same. He taught me how to grow strawberries, play table tennis (on the living room table) and ice a cake with butter icing. From work he brought us Jaffa cakes before they'd caught on in the shops and he cooked us spaghetti when most people had never seen it. Best of all he came home one evening and he had a tiny black & white kitten for me tucked inside his jacket.
We had a grey cat called Smokey. It was fed at ten o'clock every night (for some unexplained reason) by my father. This was also the time for mum and dad to watch News at Ten with a their mugs of cocoa. If father was dilatory in providing Smokey's supper then the cat would jump onto the arm of his chair and tap his hand with a paw. If he didn't immediately jump up then Smokey would knock his cocoa all over his waistcoat.
Mugs of cocoa, cosy fire side rituals. Where have all those customs gone eh? Now, it's ram a quick scotch down your neck to settle the beers and stumble upstairs, kicking any cat out of the way and falling unconcious into grubby sheets. Or is that just me? I can feel a rant coming on.
Toby, you are so right. The sub-title of my site is "Grumpy Old Git"
Go for it Toby and Tom, get that rant out. You know it's not good to bottle it all up, as Mr.Combo will all too readily attest.
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