Screwed down to a suitable wooden base…

But first…
Dulltown, UK: Today’s carefully selected adjectives are: nauseous, interradial, sebiferous, whopping, nook-shotten, exophagous, coracoid, and floppy.
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We do like our gadgets, don’t we?
We have always liked gadgets. Way back in the 1950s we liked them, even if we had to make them ourselves; there were no proper electronic gadgets back then, but there were always bits of wood, metal, electrical wire, sticky tape, and cardboard kicking about in our little workshop or garden shed available to knock something up.
There was even a magazine here in the UK for the keen gadget enthusiast, it was called Gadgets Magazine, and there was a yearly compilation available featuring the best items from that year. The 1954 Gadgets Annual specially compiled by W. N. Shaw is one of my favourite old junk shop books.

Let’s have a quick thumb through and spot some items at random:
Ways to Make Rubber-Headed Tacks, A Better Way of Opening a Food Tin. A Simple Way to Make Tongs, Practical Hose Clamps for Gardeners, Decorative Glassware from Jam Jars, Remedy Iced-Up Windscreens This Way. etc.
How about page 138?

‘Albert… Albert… Albert!…’
‘Oh!… Er, yes dear?’
‘You were murmuring to yourself and making funny curving hand movements in the air.’
‘Oh, it’s alright Madge dear, I was just planning something in my head.’
‘Your head is a very good place to do your planning Albert – and what’s that you are reading, it’s not your silly Gadgets Magazine again is it?’
‘It’s not a silly magazine Madge, it is very interesting and instructive!’
‘Hm… so you say!’
‘Look here, look at this lovely table lamp, I have most of the materials already, we’d just have to buy the oddly shaped bulb, and some sort of socket to plug it into, and maybe a length of suitable flex… It says it’s ‘quite easy to make’…’
‘What would you use for its wooden base?’
‘Well, in the shed there’s a short length of the board left over from when we put the fence up…’
‘No…’
‘No Madge?…’
‘No… Albert we will not be having a knotty rough piece of fence wood on our dining room table! And… You know you are not so good with electricity, remember last summer trying to get those scorch marks off the kitchen wall?…’
‘I could paint the wood a nice colour Madge…’
‘Pass over that magazine… Right, now then, how about some Practical Hose Clamps for Gardeners? We do need some of those!’
‘Oh Madge, do you know, I spotted that item too! Great minds think alike! I’m sure we have the necessary materials, I’ll make a start on some of those tomorrow morning…’
‘Shall I put the wireless on Albert?’
‘Yes, I fancy a bit of nice music.’
‘Tea and toast?’
‘Oh definitely!… Thank you Madge, you are so very sensible!…’