[The Old Groaner] ‘I’ve made a few improvements!’

I hung plumb lines and measured. I then found my scientific calculator and dusted it and my trigonometry off. Frau then checked the measurements and I knocked up the drawings, to scale and very clear. Pleased with the results, I checked the measurements again, and satisfied, I rechecked the trig. Tan X = Opposite divided by adjacent, right? I was spot-on and my measurements were to the nearest millimeter.

If you know my writing or have dealt with Turkish tradesmen very much, then you may as well skip the rest of the story; you know the outcome don't you?

The chippie was Yussuf, who you may remember from an earlier piece. He had taken three years to make a table for our terrace and rang up the day after its delivery to borrow 2,000 pounds.

A mere three weeks after we had delivered the drawings Yussuf came around to check. Now I had no objection to that, it displays a certain amount of conscientiousness. However, I hoped that I had made it clear to him that if he found fault with my design or dimensions we should discuss it; if not, he was to build exactly what I had drawn. He spent about an hour doing what I had done the previous week to get the measurements right, drank a mug of coffee and left. Here comes the part which some of you foresaw: He turned up a week later with two units which were as similar to my drawings as, say, a salmon is similar to a sea bass. Similar in size only; and I did say similar, by no means the same.

I have been accused in the past of being pedantic, but I tell you honestly that he had changed the overall dimensions significantly and had managed to reduce our pigeon holes in both size and number. He was completely unfazed by my frustration and departed with his money, swaggering away whistling a cheerful chippie tune. When will I learn!

I have never yet managed to get a painting or photograph framed exactly as I wanted. Now my perception of the “right” way may not in fact be right to everyone, but it's what would be right for me. I always draw a sketch showing the width of the four borders, or “paspartu,” and typically I might have 50 millimeters on both sides, 55 millimeters at the top and 65 millimeters at the bottom. As with many tradesmen around here, we have to show the dimensions required by my thumbnail on a measuring tape. I think the reasons for the inevitable result of a painting or photograph with either no paspartu or an equal one all round are not quite the same as Yussuf's “I can improve on that” or “The fool got it wrong.” I think the framing mistakes are more likely “We lost the drawing,” or possibly “We only understand centimeters.”

Frau was very upset after she put a very beautiful Egyptian museum's poster in for framing. Beneath a photo of a finely carved sacred cat was a well written and decorative description of the piece. A fine poster for our dining room wall. That one went in for framing with no complicated instructions, just “Frame this please.” They trimmed off all the black paspartu including the aforementioned writing, leaving a tightly cropped mystery cat.

Did I already tell you about our first attempt to get a circular marble table top? The story which ends with the punch line “We lost the string”? We had tried several marble workshops before we found one where the boss was prepared to take the challenge of our (then) unusual request. He was a little perturbed by my drawing -- a circle with a radius indicated -- so he asked for a full scale template. I found a piece of string, a nail and a pencil and demonstrated how such a circle could be marked out. Thankfully when we returned a week later the job had not been undertaken because his excuse for the table top not being ready for collection was as you read in quotes at the start of this paragraph.

Probably the silliest manufacturing job was the spindle for my boat's anchor windlass. The bronze piece had broken and half had been lost overboard. No problem, I drew up the sizes and shapes on a piece of paper and took it along to a recommended workshop. To further illustrate my requirements I also handed over the surviving half of the broken piece. When I returned a week later they handed me a perfectly worked piece which I quickly checked for size and found it to be perfect. Then they handed me the broken piece followed by their exact replica of the broken piece! When I told them that the latter two pieces were surplus to requirements, they were completely unfazed and simply tossed them both into the scrap bucket. End of silliness? Not quite. I fitted the new piece to the windlass, but the very first time I used it, it broke again. Now the first break had occurred as I tried to haul my boat off a lee shore in a gale; this second time I was lifting the anchor in a dead calm with barely five meters of chain out. Can you solve it? Yes, they had used brass rather than bronze. Well, it was the right color.