Dancing with your tools can be fun, but worrisome.

Once again, it is our old friend Cyril Curzon, with a word or two of caution and derision about the pretensions and pretendings of the wannabe handymen and women of our modren age who are going down to the barn store and buying just the right 'labour-saving' tool that will make everything easier for the manufacturers and distributors of DIY-friendly tools and gadgets and plans and fasteners (who use contractors, by the way, to build their buildings and their products).

This week, twist drills and foot wear and gloves and what-have-you?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Cyril Curzon!

Cyril Curzon:

Hi. Grab your plasters and come along with me, down a path strewn with ouchies and trips to the emergency wards and trauma centers.

The drill is an ancient device that has many usefulnesses. It makes holes in things. So that you can put other things in the holes. So that you can fasten things together that have never been together before and probably shouldn't be now.

Originally, the drill was a slow thing to use. It involved either a bow or a crank or a u-shaped handle that one, um, rotated at right angles to the hole one wished to make.

But, recently, (I'm not talking about industrial items, here, so don't go getting all 'industrial revolution history channel' on me) an almost wonderful item has crawled onto the market and squatted proudly in the midst of the artfully-wreck-your-own-home crowd known as DIYers, basking in the warmth of the curiosity, ingenuity and antiseptic cream that have been associated with it since World War II.

Even more recently, there is a group of louts who, in their winsome New Agey way, actually commune with the object in order to see if it really 'wants' to be pierced and connected with another object. Fooling yourself is one thing, fooling an inanimate object is just wasted drinking time!
Your actual topic at hand:

I sawr a programme the other night.

It had a representative of one of the barn stores helping out a couple with a backyard project of immense life-enhancing import: an outdoor grill and kitchen installation! If Kubrick had had one of these, we would never have had to sit through 2001 (the movie or the year).

Now, I'm all for a semi-trained industry spokesperson getting paid to go around and actually show people how to use the toys that his bosses sell.

Wish I had a job like that myself.

But, in the midst of all this flackery and whackery and manufactury, there were 'adults' wearing inappropriate footwear!

Our little expert made this modern Adam and Eve wear protective eyewear. Check. One for him.

And I am hoping he made them wear hearing protection. Check. If he did.

But, but, but, and yet, but, while the industry rep was repping how industrious the homeowner and wrecker could be, he allowed these 'adults' to wear
'thongs',

'Flip-Flops',

SHOWER SHOES

while they were bending over and using a battery-powered hand drill. They had their tootsies holding down the workpiece!

The industry flack himself, mind you, was wearing $250.00 steel-toed work boots! What an opportunity he missed with the foot wear! Oh, his bosses don't sell footwear? Never mind!
Reminder to all who can read or all those who can
listen while someone else who can read reads this to them:

A foot or a hand is softer than a board or a brick or a piece of metal. Don't tempt the power tools by presenting them with an easy target! They are just actively lazy enough to make the effort to jump from the hard surface to the soft one!
REMEMBER: IF YOU HAVEN'T HAD AN ACCIDENT OR AN INCIDENT RECENTLY, THEN YOU ARE DUE!
IF YOU HAVE HAD AN ACCIDENT OR AN INCIDENT RECENTLY, DON'T GET SMUG! THE FIRST ONE MAY HAVE JUST BEEN A PRACTICE RUN!

So, remember, folks, I can't tell you enough, just because they do it on the telly or you saw someone else do it, it's their body. You do what you have to to protect yours.

This has been Cyril Curzon,

now stepping carefully away from the computer keyboard to go find some sane people to associate with. Wonder what's going on down at the graveyard?