A STICKY SITUATION

Duct tape is great. For those of you not familiar with this life changing product, it’s a bit like Sellotape but silver and has cotton strands running though it for strength. Known also as Duck tape, it was developed in the second World War for fixing military equipment such as ammunition cases, jeeps, firearms, tanks and aircraft where it earned another nick-name “100 miles an hour tape”. NASA have even used it on the moon. I have been familiar with it for years as a variation of it called Gaffer tape, this was the slightly less tacky stuff that live bands used to stick the miles of electrical cables safely to the floor at concerts. It was put in place so us teenagers wouldn’t trip over ourselves and spill the watered down lager we had just bought in the plastic pint glass. I have stuck with it over the years though and Duct tape now holds most things together in the house.

My computer has lengths of it holding the USB cables in place and the wires are neatly stuck to the floor and walls near the plug sockets. (I walk over them occasionally to relive my memories of going to Genesis concerts) The shredder that I recently bought and lovingly cared for is now covered in the thick, strong tape as the machine fell over when I was moving it in the garden, smashing the protective plastic casing. There really should have been a protective bar to protect the protective case but as there wasn’t, the front of the machine ended up in thousands of fragments on the driveway. The big gaping hole where the shredders innards were spilling out have been sealed up and made safe … with a few feet of Duct tape.

The handle came off the bird feeder today and when my lad came to me so I could fix it, I thought of only one thing that was up to the job (spilt lager at a concert proved that) … Trusty duct tape. “It’s waterproof too.” I tell him. There is one thing in the garden that the tape hasn’t held together though. A seat.

The seat was originally a two in one chair with a small table in the middle for your drinks. They are a bit like those courting chairs of old, but you are both facing the same direction and can kiss easier. Anyway, one of them fell apart some time ago at a rather over zealous children’s party, leaving the remaining chair and the table, which also looked as though they were destined for the fire. So out came the Duct tape. It worked quite well too, and had that industrial look to it with the silver reflecting in the winter sunshine. Until that is, I sat on it today… My lad was taking a photo of me, supposedly relaxing and extolling the virtues of the tape when the inevitable happened.

The photo says it all…………There are things that even duct tape won’t fix……

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed