Quitting Time: The Mother Of Invention

An Australian might call this, “Bodgying something together”. An American might call it a “kludge”. Whatever its name, I always imagine the self-satisfied handyman standing back, surveying his work, and muttering the phrase uttered since time immemorial; “There. Better than a bought one.”

I took this photo when I was in Texas a couple of years back and I came across it recently while I was cleaning out a drive. (Water restrictions don’t let you hose down your drive anymore.)

This piece of genius was in the computer room of a middling quality hotel I was staying in. In fact, what alerted me to it was the lamp attached on the other side of the wall. It was sitting in a hallway on an unadorned side-table, with an electric power cord that just dived into the wall like David Campbell at a Turkish bathhouse.

I had to know where the lead went, so ambled around the corner into the computer room to investigate.

The guy who was using the computer room was a little non-plussed. What he saw was a large, giggling bloke come lurching into the room, kick a chair out of the way and start taking photos of what looked like the empty corner of a room. I pointed at the power cord by way of explanation, but he didn’t seem to find it as amusing.

Anyway, the thing that really keeps me chuckling about this, is the implicit workmanship. The ‘handyman’ has drilled a nice small hole but he’s obviously then had to do one of two things to get the power cord through it. Either remove the power cord from the base of the lamp, or the plug from the end of the power cord. So, he’s had to do some re-wiring. If you’re going to the bother of rewiring, why don’t you just do the wiring job properly the first place? Put a power point in the hall.