The trampoline and the toothbrush

Avid readers of the Infinite Weekend will recall the Sears trampoline, which once featured in a video on YouTube when I was an aspiring front-flipper.  Since then I've followed the wise advise of my friend Dr. Bannon by putting my front-flipping ambitions on one side, and I've never posted a second video; but my YouTube channel still occasionally attracts a new devotee, and currently boasts 85 subscribers, all presumably agog for my next instalment.  Even more amazingly, the video itself has has more than forty-two thousand views.  Wow!  

Anyway, the trampoline has a cover over the springs called the "safety pad", which has been gradually disintegrating to the point where it covers the mat with little white bits of plastic which make the trampoline look as if it is suffering from dandruff. And so I decided to replace it, for the sake of neatness, reduced plastic pollution, and little Layla's delicate sensibilities.

The trampoline is a fairly high-end one made by Plum, who naturally supply spare parts for their products.  Alas, the particular "safety pad" in question is now listed as discontinued.  That is possibly just as well because they do still list the price - a somewhat eye-watering £79.99!

Of course there are others available.  After a bit of research I plumped for a generic 12ft round one in a rather fetching royal blue, for £45 from Ebay, and it turned up very promptly in a big cardboard box, which the delivery driver amusingly wedged under the handle of the front door.  This made turning the door handle on the inside very difficult for a while - in fact right up until the lovely Jackie had succeeded in digging a large hole in the top of the box with the handle on the outside.  Fortunately, the contents were undamaged.

The old safety pad was just held on with elasticated tapes, but since this is a safety pad, I was pleased that the new one came with comprehensive fitting instructions.  One can't take chances with safety, after all.  The instructions in question consisted of a single sheet of A4, with the following three panels photocopied onto it.  The captions are the original ones.

1

2

3

I know that it's frowned-upon to use actual language in instructions these days, but I do think number 3 requires a bit of explanation.  What has happened to the people from 1 and 2?  To be honest, the people in 1 were already looking a bit pissed off, as if they've been told to stand there and not move until they're ready to say sorry to each other.  Have they just had enough, and walked off the job?  If they had appeared in 3 in a kind of Ta-da! pose, arms extended, we'd have known it was all finished, and everything was alright; but just disappearing like that is a bit eerie.  

Also, I couldn't help noticing that the man from 2 (with the black tee-shirt) is not one of the men from 1 (who both have white tee-shirts).  Are they telling me it's a three-man job?  At least until the entire squad runs off to hijack a car, or whatever it is they are doing in 3?

I did my best, using my skill and judgement to put the new pad in place and tie it on with the elasticated straps provided, single-handed.   I think it'll probably be all right.  Fingers crossed.

The toothbrush has absolutely nothing to do with the trampoline, by the way.

A while ago, the lovely Jackie and I did some decorating in our bedroom, which involved painting behind a radiator.  In times gone by, one did this by fiddling around with miniature rollers and a tiny brush on a stick, but our recently-build house has handy flexible micro-bore plastic plumbing, so you can just lift the radiator off its brackets while it's still connected, and paint the wall normally.  When we did that, an electric toothbrush fell out.  Obviously one of the previous occupants had put it down on the radiator, whence it had fallen down behind, and got stuck on the pipes where they go into the wall.  And there it stayed, hidden from view, until now.

I threw out the actual brush part (obviously), but the electric handle was just like the ones we use (Braun/Oral B)  and it charged up quite happily and works OK, so I kept that.  The interesting thing about it is that it's yet another different model.  We have a cheapy one with no frills, and a slightly more expensive one which warns you if you are pressing too hard.  The "new" one is more expensive still, and it has modes.  These allow you to choose weird speed effects like slow, and pulsing, and wandering around as if deranged.  I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want to use any of them.  Personally I just want the thing to work for as long as possible between charges.  But is has given me the opportunity to compare the various models; and I conclude that the cheapy one works just as well as the others; and that the only difference between the other two is that the expensive one has to go through all its modes to get from on to off, which means that you have to press the button four times instead of once.  Which, to my mind, is definitely not a feature worth paying more for.

You can still get toothbrushes from this range, but the top end of the market has moved on quite a bit.  You can now get a toothbrush which features Bluetooth connectivity, for some unaccountable reason.  Not to mention "enhanced A.I. and 3D Teeth tracking capabilities" which sounds ideal if you are, for some reason, unable to locate your teeth yourself.  The "interactive display" says good morning to you, and shows a little smiley face when you've finished (as long as you've done it properly).  I imagine it's comforting to win the approval of your toothbrush in much the same way as it was once comforting to be offered computing help by an uninvited animated paperclip - which is to say, not at all. 

All these features come at a cost though - around £200 actually.  If my review of stuff found down the back of the radiator is anything to go by, I say it's probably not very good value for money.

So there you have it.  I'd really like to know how sales of the £200 toothbrush range are going - I'd like to think not too well, because it's silly, but I suspect there are plenty of people who will buy the most expensive one just because it's the most expensive one.   Or maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions, and missing out on something truly marvellous without giving it a fair chance to prove itself.  Oh well.  I'll just have to wait until we move house again and hope to find one behind a radiator to find out.