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OK so I was cajoled into releasing a few more examples of Len Wilde's thrift
jems. All are true stories.
The Cordless Telephone.
Once in summer on one of my regular weekend visits he pointed out that 'with
one of those cordless phones yer could clip it to yer belt then when you wer in
t'garden you wouldn't have to run inside to answer the phone'. Falling totally
for the ploy I dutifully turned up the next weekend fitted the new toy, plugged
it in and made sure it worked OK.
The following weekend I returned expecting to hear about the joys that this
sudden freedom from a length of cable had produced only to be greeted with
"I didn't know it had to be plugged in all the time, using 'lectric".
Of course the offending item was the small LED indicator which indicated that
the unit was charging, but which in his eyes shone bright enough to read War
& Peace by. The net result was that I now had to purchase another,
non-cordless phone, sans LED, and Howard at the office was the better for a
cordless phone at around half the normal price.
Getting a Ticket
He once confessed to having received a 'Ticket' from the local Constabulary
for driving a car in daylight fog without headlights.
When I asked why he didn't have his headlights on in the fog he replied
"Well I stopped at some traffic lights, turned them off for a bit 'to save
the battery' and forgot to turn them on again".
The Floorboard
Once after a builder had done some work on his kitchen wall, which
necessitated replacing a small piece of floor boarding he, as usual, asked the
builder that if he didn't need the last bits of the floorboard he could leave it
in the garage as it 'might come in sometime'.
The following weekend I was greeted with the sight of the kitchen carpet out
in the garden, and lengths of floor boarding having been cut away by the joists.
"Well it seemed a bit daft to have a piece of new floorboard in the garage
when those on the kitchen floor are old, so I was very careful not to cut out
more than the length in the garage".
This was correct, the missing length was in fact marginally less than the
'new piece', Unfortunately one of the cuts had been made at the wrong side of
the joist and so a length of floor board which was planned to remain in place
now acted as a rather fetching spring board. The net result was that after
fitting the 'left over' floor boarding in the now available gaps, I had to go
out and buy an additional length to replace the mouse's springboard. At the end
of the exercise did the remaining piece of new floorboard go to the garage or in
my car. You decide!. During this episode I also had the pleasure of using some
nails which had clearly been removed from their original position some years
previously, and carefully but not effectively 'straightened' with a hammer.
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