I really should have made more of the fact that I've had an anniversary - it's now been two years since the start of the Infinite Weekend! Which means there's only 18 years left before my maximum chosen lifespan (80) expires in a puff of nitrogen. Or to put it another way, I'm 10% through. So far, so good.
Retirement has treated me very well so far, I must say. The "Infinite Weekend" name still seems completely appropriate. There has been a lot of lazing around, quite a bit of socialising, a slightly disturbing total quantity of alcohol consumed, and an amazingly large variety of things happening which get in the way of whatever it was I previously thought I was going to get done; in other words just like any normal weekend, but going on continuously. For two years. Together with the unfailing love and support of the lovely Jackie, and the free prescription Citalopram, it's a pretty good setup.
Unfortunately, the sorry story of the dining table continues - parts of it are still lurking in dark, hidden places in the
garage paint shop, while I try to get round to masking the underside of the top so that I can paint the frame (but not the ballraces) a fetching metallic copper, like the centre extension pieces and the parts of the base which aren't RAL5020. It will all make sense when it's finished, and I show you a picture of it, I promise. In the meantime it's all going on far too long, and unfortunately writing about how it isn't finished yet doesn't seem to help complete it.
Meanwhile, our house has two outside taps - one on the mains, and the other fed by the rainwater harvesting system, which also feed the downstairs loo with flush water. Ever since the
Battle of the Somme, it's been supplying water tinged with mud, which looks strangely like urine when it's in a loo. One has to remember to explain the whole thing to new visitors, lest they get stuck in a continuous flush/wash hands/flush/wash hands loop. Anyway, two taps... but we only have one hose pipe. Fortunately it's on a fancy Hoselock reel which sits in a wall bracket, so it would be easy to move between taps, if only one had another bracket.
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| an original Hoselock bracket |
Amazingly, one can still buy just the bracket from Hoselock; but it does cost £10.99 plus shipping. and it is only a bit of bent metal after all. So, to perk up my ailing paint shop spirits with something more achievable, I thought I'd make one, out of nice predictable metal. Metal, vise, hacksaw, bashing with a hammer, drilling, filing. Proper making, in other words. And here it is.
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| a cobbled-up out of odds and sods bracket |
The truly attentive reader might conceivably recognise the slot pattern in my cobbled up out of odds and sods bracket and say "Dexion", but how many would recognise that it's aluminium (or possibly Dural) Dexion? They don't make that any more; actually I've been unable to find out when they ever did. I'm pretty sure I've never acquired any myself, so that means my stock (sadly, only a couple of short lengths) must have come from my parents' house, where it was originally the property of my eldest brother, Ken. I have no memory of a time before it was there. It was definitely there early in my youth, because it was used to make a especially memorable soap-box cart - it was especially memorable because it taught me to file off the rough edges after you've cut up Dexion with a hacksaw, by gashing a big hole in my ankle during an otherwise trivial collision with a wall. You can't beat trauma for getting the message through, can you? Anyway, those bits of metal must be well over 50 years old, and have been faithfully following me around for most of their lives. And now they are screwed on a wall, transformed into a fitting for a hose reel. I think it's a fitting end.
