Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

if I had a hammer...

You would think that in my capacity as a practising theatre electrician the hammer would not loom too large as an essential part of the tool kit. They are used principally for tapping in the tapered pins that join certain types of lighting truss.
Factor into this my occasional deviations into prop fabrication and demolition and perhaps the presence of an odd hammer might be less of a surprise.

I counted up my hammers today, less because I was bored, rather that I keep tripping over them in unlikely places; I can positively state that I have sixteen. I have four claw hammers, three ball pein hammers, two lump hammers, two mallets, one brick hammer, one log maul, a tack hammer, a hatchet and a geologists hammer. What can I say, I like hammers, I just didn't realise that I was subconsciously accumulating them, like a nesting blacksmith.

This reminds me of a story that dates from my time at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, when it was occupying the middle floor of a former school building and not the swish site it has now. The upper and lower floors were used by Scarborough Tech. One day rehearsals were in progress as was the custom, but there was much more noise than usual from upstairs, in fact there was a great deal of banging, and this banging showed no sign of abating. After about an hour of this, Alan Aykbourn, who was directing, decided he'd had enough,and he'd go up and see if they could be persuaded to shut up. When he eventually returned, he was purple, and helpless with laughter; he had been taken to one side, and the tutor had explained with great seriousness that they couldn't stop, because they were having a hammering exam.

posted by Lampy @ 8/09/2005 01:16:00 pm