As I'm sure is true for most of us, instruction books, be it for new shiny stuff or just the mundane, are rarely consulted. Having said that, I got a new angle grinder a while back and did indeed give the book a look. Ninety percent Health and Safety so carefully filed it in the trash.
As you know I'm starting, slowly, to re-fit the bathroom. What? You didn't know? Come on! Please try and keep up! Anyhoo, upon opening the fittings for the toilet pan a small piece of paper fluttered to the ground. I retrieved said small piece of paper, with difficulty as it was on the ground and I was standing up, and discovered it was the 'instruction manual'.
Having spent many years as an international jet-setting roughneck, verbally communicating in shouted pidgin isn't a problem. Reading pidgin, however, always gives me pause for a smile and it was thus reading the 'manual' for using screws.
Clicking seems to biggerate it.
By the way, they did it better than I could do it taking it their way.
I could be jumping to conclusions of course. It's more than likely been put together by a recent product of our own education system, with a sack full of assorted GCSE 'A' grades, who got the job as Technical Author by dint of being the only applicant with no ear, eye, nose or lip piercings, no facial tattoos and wore a tie for the interview.
Regardless, this gave me pause for thought…. stop sniggering at the back!! Thoughts along these lines.
As we all know, except those in charge of stuff, we'll shortly be in need of some new nuclear power plants so we can see things in the dark that don't naturally glow. According to wot we read, we no longer have the required expertise in the UK to build them ourselves so will have to buy they nuclear plants from somewhere over there.
Does this mean that the plants will arrive here in kit form and the best and brightest of Britain's young bucks will be charged with the task of gluing them together? If this is going to be the case, we need to be finding someone with a top degree, a first with honours, in pidgin translation, to check out the instruction book that'll come with the kit. (It'll be at the bottom of the box in a plastic bag along with all the nuts, bolts and washers. Note; don't waste time looking; you will be short one nut.)
Finding the right boy for this task will be money well spent and could possibly prevent, the day before the ribbon cutting, back slapping stuff, one of those moments when the boss of the best and brightest of Britain's young bucks surveys the results of their handy work, pauses for thought, then says,
"Hang on a minute. See that big bit over there?"
"That bit there?"
"No, the really big bit behind that bit. The main bit. The bit where we figured they'll put those long rods that're lying in the canteen."
"Ah, that bit. Yea, the rods. Remember when we finished and thought we had some bits left over?"
"Sure do. Stupid rods. Anyway, take a look at the instruction book again. Now look at the really big bit again. I think we've got it, like, upside-down."
Quote; Dan Castellaneta.
“Well you know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like a women. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.”
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