The message
from JB contains these words:
On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:38:55 +0000, wrote:
What is the hardest thing to remember when gardening?
Where I left my secateurs
Yellow insulation tape on the handles or, if your prefer a soft grip,
the tape sold in sports shops to use as racket grips on squash rackets
(why are garden tools produced with green and brown handles?)
Well, there's the simple answer for the design student's project.
Forget the computerised plantpot. What gardeners really want, is a way
to stop tools getting lost in the undergrowth. (Forestry tool
manufacturers have already grasped that, and make planting spades etc
with dayglo yellow shafts).
I'd happily settle for shocking pink handles. (Room for a brief
exposition by our student on avoiding blue-green-red handles, for the
sake of whatever proportion of the population is colourblind) .But if
the designer really wants to go high-tech, the technology is already
available in those keys that make the car bleep and flash at you.
Pressing a little keyring-sized scanner gadget would cause the lost
handfork to announce its whereabouts. Ideally, the locator-bleep could
be retro-fitted to favourite old brown tools. Further product
development opportunity; how not to lose the keyring-sized scanner in
the garden. The frugal gardener in me says "tie it on string round
neck".
No, no...it's coming to me now.. each garden tool is programmed with
its own phone number. When the spade gets lost, you just call it from
your mobile phone, and make it ring......
Janet