FLYING BLIND

It stood in the corner, in its square plastic box, looking truculent. All I knew is that I had to fit the blasted thing and I’d had desperate problems with them in the past. It was five feet long and awkward with it. It was a roller blind, and I had to fit it, on my own, on a late November evening after an enervating day turning the handle somewhere. I took it out of its box. As usual, it wasn’t assembled and there was a bag of bits to identify and fit. It looked the same length as the other one I’d taken off. I pushed the ratchet thing into one side and the holding pin bush into the other. The latter was supposed to be an interference fit, but wasn’t. It flopped around like a lonely tulip. I climbed the ricketty aluminium step-ladder onto the kitchen bench. The ladder was ricketty because I’d backed the car over it one day and bent one of its legs and several of the steps, as well as the clumsy folding lid at the top that is supposed to secure it. I removed the existing brackets and replaced them with the new. I offered the blind up to the new brackets and, with a terrific crash, the holding pin slipped out of its abutment and the blind fell into the sink. The holding pin bush flew out of the roller and lodged somewhere across the room. Now that I had time to examine the brackets properly, I could see that they were an entirely different design, and that the right hand bracket would have to be moved half-an-inch inwards, because the present distance was too great. The brackets were screwed into a hardwood soffit which in turn was screwed to the wall. I knew I should go and fetch a drill and drill two holes, because past experience showed me that none of my hand tools would make the slightest impression on the hardwood. However, the drill was in the garage and I was in my stockinged feet, so didn’t feel like traversing the freezing-cold garage floor. I also knew that I should use a tape-measure and measure the precise distance that the bracket should be moved. I lined it up by eye instead, confident that I couldn’t make a mistake with such a trifling distance involved. I ended up using the point of a pair of dressmakers’ scissors to make the hole into which the screws could be screwed. It made a feeble imprint on the timber, which was a better effort than any of my hand tools. I offered up the new bracket and, holding it with my left hand, tried to secure the screw with my right. Predictably, the screw would not take. Instead, the bracket slipped from my hand and made a mark on the new worktop, as did the screwdriver. One of the screws performed a lazy parabola off the bench and went straight down the plug-hole. I ended up using much smaller screws. After what seemed an eternity, I managed to screw the bracket into the hardwood soffit. I offered up the new blind, having wrapped the holding-pin bush in baco-foil, so that it was more an interference fit than previously. To my consternation, the brackets were now too close together. I ended up bending the holding pin bracket outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees so that it would accept the blind. I unfolded the string on the blind and worked the machinery up and down a few times. The roller performed jerkily and in a slightly unco-ordinated fashion, but it would certainly do. At that point, my wife returned home and said ‘You’ve put it on back to front – what’s the point in letting the neighbours see the patterned side when we’ve had the kitchen completely redecorated and we’re forced to look at the plain?” Standing back, away from the work, I could see that she had a point. Wearily, I put on my shoes and prepared to walk across the garage to get the drill. I simply couldn’t face another round with the point of the dressmakers’ scissors.