'Shedheads'
An obvious put-up job
By Victor Lewis-Smith, Evening Standard 21 February 2003 With hundreds of digital TV channels, all desperate to fill their schedules, is it any wonder that the airwaves are once again crammed with public information films? Nowadays, these short films are mostly bland announcements about income tax and child benefit, but in my youth they were positively horrific, with titles like "Loose Stair Carpets can Kill" and "Fireworks Maim for Life," made by civil servants who clearly harboured ambitions to be the next Sam Peckinpah. Day after day, children were traumatised by the sight of falling chip pans that left infants looking like Simon Weston, splattered peaches representing heads going through windscreens, and senile grandads turning their son's house into a blazing inferno with carelessly discarded roll-ups (an unlikely scenario, I grant you, because in my experience keeping a home-made ciggie alight is as difficult as trying to ignite a damp Shredded Wheat in a wind tunnel). And the result? A generation who grew up frightened to leave the house, yet terrified to stay in. Things were no better if they retired to the garden shed, that sanctuary of infallible inflammability where old codgers sneak off to enjoy a sly face tube amongst the cans of meths and creosote, and end up celebrating Burns Night in their own special way in A&E, with ne'er a bagpipe nor haggis in sight. Yet despite their inherent combustibility, these flimsy wooden structures offer a tranquil space in which crushed and defeated husbands can seek refuge from the battlefield of the marital home, and it is to those war-weary refugees that Shedheads (Discovery Home & Leisure) is attempting to speak. "One in six of us is the proud owner of a shed," enthused Stu Evans and Rick Tate yesterday morning, promising that we too could "get away from it all to enjoy a hobby" if we followed their advice. "This workroom cost £600," they told us, pointing to a large pile of unassembled wood on the lawn, then added that they could show us how to save £600. So, ipso facto, surely the shed ought to cost us nothing at all? Sadly, the £600 saving turned out to be the additional cost that you'd otherwise have to pay a professional to help you achieve a full and satisfying erection in the privacy of your own garden (you can fill in your own joke here). But besides demanding several days of your time, Rick and Stu's thrifty scheme required a work bench, circular saw, electric screwdriver, concrete mixer, and an assortment of other tools (costing far more than the proposed saving), and also obliged you to possess a variety of manual skills which those of us who did arts at university have seldom acquired. Bugger that. People who sell sheds will invariably assemble them for a modest fee, and I'm certainly not spending my weekends getting felt up on the roof (once again, fill in your own joke here), or trying to make perfect corners "by using a technique called the three four five". No, if it's corners I require, I simply pop down to my local corner shop and buy some, and as for that hard-to-handle roofing felt, I'll never shed a tear over a tear in a shed. In an attempt to raise the tone, the programme briefly derailed into an item called "Sheds of Distinction," featuring an 18th century witch's house that evinced no B&Q-style shedness whatsoever, having cost £19,000 to renovate, and resembling a cross between a Bengal veranda and a Puglian trulli. But although Stu and Rick's interest in their subject clearly borders on fetishism, their use of garage music to accompany their labours didn't fool me into thinking that conventional sheds are "happening" and "now", because frankly even Glenn Miller would have seemed a trifle racy in this context. "Hold the shutter ply up, stop it bellying," they advised us in a language tantalisingly close to English as they prepared the concrete base, thereby confirming my belief that building jobs are best left to professionals, as indeed is the construction of television programmes. Because while their finished shed looked solid and true, their feeble attempts at lively presentation (adopting singsongy voices and saying "diddly bom" "diddly do"), allow me to redress the balance by asking them, "Cor blimey, who done this programme mate? Cowboys?" For Rick and Stu, the appeal of a shed obviously lies in its construction, but to me the edifice seems a perfect metaphor for life itself. Indeed, the tragedy of human existence is surely that men spend their early manhood paying scrupulous attention to clothing and personal hygiene, so they can invite a succession of young women on exciting and expensive nights out, during which they make prodigious efforts to appear charming, witty, urbane, erudite, considerate and above all fascinating. And why? So that they can marry, set up home and buy a shed in which to spend their free time for the next 50 years, going back into the house only to eat, during which time man and wife sit facing the TV, without ever exchanging a word. And then they die. |
'Shedheads'
eddy wrote:
With hundreds of digital TV channels, all desperate to fill their schedules, is it any wonder that the airwaves are once again crammed with public information films? My very favorite, which my (former) employer used to drop into the schedule whenever there were a few minutes unaccounted for, was "Potatoland," featuring "Miss Maine Potato of, I think, 1958" describing how potatoes were grown, including the herbicide that's sprayed to kill off the foliage a little early! A local radio type lampooned those home improvement shows as: "This is Bob Condo, telling you that you with your limited skills and finances can do the same job as my crew with the best craftsmen in town and all the time and money in the world. Which proves that P.T. Barnum was right." Heck, knocking together a half-dozen wood frames for some seed cleaning screens is about the limit of my ability. My shed was bought in panelized form; I had to handle the erection myself. #end cabinFever rant. Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at www.albany.net/~gwoods Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1200' elevation. NY WO G |
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