But first…
Dulltown, Europe: Today’s weather forecast is for glue skies and white louds, but with drain and hog before evening…
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Here is an item from those dark days when my blog was on Myspace:
In the world of theatre scenery building the ‘flats’ which compose the set are usually fixed to each other with hinges which have removable pins, so that the whole thing can be assembled, and after the show, taken down again pretty quickly. This method is particularly handy for touring shows where the scenery is put up and struck daily, sometimes twice daily.
One can buy specialist ‘loose pin’ hinges, but not in this town, so people usually get ordinary butt hinges, grind off the ends of the pins, knock them out and replace them with thinner pins cut from a wire coat hanger. These are not too tight, not too slack, and are just the right diameter for the job.
A while ago I was building a set and needed some of these replacement pins; I needed some wire coat hangers. You can’t buy them in shops… there aren’t such things as wire coat hanger shops…
‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘dry cleaning shops have lots of them, perhaps they might give, or sell me a few?…’ So, I popped into a dry cleaners and enquired.
‘No…’ the immaculate woman behind the counter said, ‘We do have them, but we don’t sell them to people…’
‘Well can you tell me where you get them from?’ I asked.
‘Can you come back this afternoon? I’ll have to ask the boss…’
‘Right ho!’ I said.
Later: ‘Any news on those wire coat hangers?’
‘I mentioned it to the boss, but he said that he’s not telling you!…’
‘Oh, why not?’
She lowered her voice a decibel or two, looked to left and right, and said, ‘We just keep quiet about where they come from…’ I expected her to wink, but she didn’t…
‘Oh, right ho!’ I said, and left the premises…
This conjures up an underworld web of criminal gangs dealing solely in wire coat hangers, all members sworn to secrecy as to the origins of the things. I see images of filthy factories in the poorest parts of the globe, sweatshops full of thin big-eyed children miserably twisting and bending wire with their little bruised fingers sixteen hours a day… There are probably vicious coat hanger wars going on as I write this, the general public oblivious to it all…
If you have a few of these items idly clanking around in your wardrobe, I’d keep an eye on them if I were you… they are like gold dust…
NO WIRE HANGERS! (Joan Crawford.) You can always tell when someone is wearing a sweater that has hung on a wire hanger. Those little points are so awkward.
I bet you could find wire at the local hardware store, though.
Well, the local hardware store: No… they have ‘gardening wire’ which is green plastic coated. I tried that and it was an ideal diameter, but plastic coating made it jam in the hinges and the actors used to swear horribly trying the pull them out, the uncoated wire the hardware store have is either too thin or two thick; steel suppliers have something suitable, but you have to buy about a mile of it on a big reel. So, I did try… I’ll bet you wish you’d never mentioned it Jean… Anyway, I have stopped doing theatre stuff these days… I’ve had enough of it!
Probably a good job she didn’t tell you, because if she had, then wouldn’t she have had to kill you?
Gosh, you’re probably right… Hope she doesn’t read my post…