nameunknown

No, don't drool over the title, they are just s shop in "Leather Lane", London (number 57), with a mad collection of add-ons for the Dremel and other tools. I could spend hours in such a place.... P

Gaffer tape is great stuff. I've just used it to fix an obsy window in place, because the frame looks like driftwood after years of exposure to the sun and a SE wind. I must really get around to taking out the old glass paned lights and putting in some lighter ones with GLODEX. That window frame needs a paint too - more than ten years since the initial coat. Ten years and more, Jeeez. Adrian was alive back then and we built the obsy over an Easter break. I was on the "L-plan diet": get up early, work like stink on the obsy, cup of tea when Adrian turned up for work (usually about 11:00 after a few reminders about the fact that I was four floors up and doing things that I should not be doing alone). Knock off at 18:00, down the pub for a few lagers (that's the "L"), and in bed knackered by 21:00. I lost a few stone running up and down a few flights cutting timber and carrying it back up. Adrian is dead these past two years. Massive multiple organ failure brought on by years of never being able to put off until tomorrow what he could enjoy today: drugs, drink, food, and another day not getting a job. We grew up in the same town, knew each other since our teens. His father was a Tory councillor who owned, house, shop and car, mine walked to work from council estate to factory. Our biker pasts diverged when I went off to Cambridge and he went off to work in the theatre - I used to joke I worked in the theatre too, except in mine the blood was real, and the tragedies, while repeated, didn't have the same cast every night. Years passed. We met again. I offered him work for hire (at a fair rate) and sometimes caustic advice. By that time, after my mountaineering accident, I also knew a lot about opiates and their effects. I kept them well hidden, but he still stole them. Then I got the phone-call... "sorry Dr ----------, I believe you know Mr ---------, we have him in IC, its not good". He was yellow with jaundice, too far gone to converse, and dead within the week. Gaffer tape. As I was putting it on (clipped neatly with a pair of paramedic shears), I thought my hair and beard are now the grey colour of that storm-bleached driftwood, and deferred gratification can only be deferred so far (and the beard must go ... it's too Harold Shipman). P