“A bad workman allways blames his tools”. As a bad workman I regularly used to blame my pathetic collection of tools for my inability to do anything with DIY.
A year or two ago I picked up a brand new Bosch drill complete with bits and everything for about 35 quid from a superb DIY shop that was changing management. Today was the first time I have been able to use it for a legitimate purpose.
Let me tell you, if I’d have owned that drill 10 years ago I may well have been a much happier and more rounded individual. Using a drill that drills true, with a wide collection of bits and screwdriver tips is one of the most gorgeous thrills, particularly to a 30-something man feeling emasculated by current life events. Sad but true. Why am I now humming “satisfaction” by Benny Benassi I wonder ?
Anyway, something that would have taken me several hours of swearing, bleeding and frustration took less that 15 minutes: fixing the kitchen units that Michele previously kicked to shit. Not only did the drill-hole for the screw work perfectly but I used the drill to screw the screw into the wood with less effort than I imagine it would take to push a cocktail stick into Jack Straw’s eyeball.
I can’t wait to try out the masonry drills now. After years of using my dad’s Black and Decker, with its unique “vibrowobble” action maybe I’ll be able to put a shelf up without the raw plugs falling out 10 minutes later.
Maybe bad workmen are bad because they have shite tools, in which case their blame is well deserved.
Anyway – enough freudian rambling.
Nathan Barley started on C4 last night. As Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris are two of my all time heroes, and as Nathan Barley is a chracter beautifully crafted from pure bile, I was dead keen on watching it. Inevitably I got back from the pub, ate my pizza (from Planet Pizza – “for pizzas that are out of this woooorrrldd”) and fell asleep, waking just in time to forget watching the end credits. Michele confirmed my fears that it would be a let down and crap, and so I went to bed.
Today I looked-up a load of reviews and found a constant theme of people relaying the pre-broadcast press-releases followed by some very unimaginative insults that made my cynical side question whether they had ever watched it.
Joyfully, some lovely individual had ripped, encoded and seeded a juicy bittorrent this morning. Thank you, whoever you are, and I’m still seeding BTW.
So I watched it, and thought it was really excellent!
It’s certainly not a straight TV adaption of the original column. In fact I thought Nathan Barley was almost an incidental character. Perfect, because too much of that irritating wanker would result in even the most tolerant pacifist setting up a local extermination mob. Instead the protagonist, Dan Ashcroft, is a troubled cynical soul that really cheered me up. I don’t know why watching miserable, cynical TV cheers me up, but after the bloody awful week I’ve had, only Monkey Dust or this would have been able to make me feel better. Arseholes to the reviewers (especially that nob from the telegraph), this is top stuff.
