Shut-knife

The finest bit of shut-knife work that our estate has seen for a long time; work occasioned by the recent wind taking down a stretch of down-pipe, only weakly fixed to the wall. With the short, hard, plastic plugs that had been used here having nothing like the grip of a proper wooden plug of old.

Shut-knife being the term once used to describe the sturdy folding knives carried by countrymen in their coat pockets as they went about their business, at least in the East Midlands. Knives that could be used for all manner of stuff, rather in the way that small hand axes are still used by countrymen in Russia.

However, not having such an implement myself, I went for the full black-box performance, only supplemented by an elderly power drill from Bosch. A drill which I once took apart for some reason and, as I recall, the insides looked very well engineered.

Most of the wood used had been recycled from a garden shed from years ago, but the two vertical elements were cut from a piece of three by two which had got worm in one end, now cut up and underneath the honeysuckle box at the end of the garden. But these two bits were usable and were oddly fine grained. Too fine for pine; too pale and too soft for a hardwood like beech. Maybe some strange foreign timber from inside a three piece suite? Or from a pallet?

Need to check the bit of the garage where I pulled it from for the worm. Capable of spreading something dreadful if one lets it go.

PS 1: the wind was, in the rather florid language favoured by television and telephone weather reporters, described as a storm. But nothing so exciting here in Epsom.

PS 2: an interesting graphic from the piece at reference 5. The phrase 'tobacco users' ought to include vapers, chewers, cigar smokers and other marginals, but I have not checked. Nor have I worked out what 'age standardised' might mean in this context, let alone whether it would be a good idea. I have always had rather mixed feelings about seasonal adjustment, big when I set off in government statistics.

PS 3: the next morning: the Microsoft advertisement server is on the case. Talk of carpentry yesterday and I am offered a fine new power saw today. Doesn't make my credit card twitch - but I do associate to the beechwood mitre block I once owned, not much used. As I recall, it fell prey to the worm some decades ago.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/compost-bin-first-day.html. Contains an image of the box in question.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/dream-fragment.html. A dream version of same.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/music-identification.html. The music identification business that came up yesterday.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/new-resident.html. A spot of family history.

Reference 5: Slowdown hits Big Tobacco in Asia’s cigarette stronghold: Indonesians buy cheaper illegal alternatives as economy stumbles - A. Anantha Lakshmi, Diana Mariska, Financial Times - 2025.