Where are the lawyers

My uncle Jim stayed in Paris for a year and came out with a new mantra, “where are the lawyers?”—he would spend hours watching crazy French game shows where contestants performed acts that fear-of-lawsuit would ban from American television. I was reminded of this earlier this evening at Homebase.

This has nothing to do with this post, I just found it at a page by Micah Wright and loved the art and wanted to squeeze a link in. My only problem is that technically, it’s impossible to re-elect George Bush as he wasn’t properly elected in the first place (see Richard Dawkins’ pertinent comment) but where was I…

Oh yeah, the lawyers;-) Anyway, I popped into homebase to buy sheets of MDF (tropical hardwood forests burnt, mashed, pulped in horrendous chemicals and shipped to the west for morons like me to make bad furniture with) to finish the bench in the hall. Now, if you’ve ever done this before, you’ll know about those giant machines they have in the back of the store—these machines will cut a 4×8 piece of MDF into millimetre-perfect chunks of wood making assembly almost as easy as an IKEA bookcase (in some cases easier). Except that in 9 out of 10 trips to the diy store the machine is either out of order or the operator is out to lunch, and even if all is well, the spotty teenager operating the thing tells you to bugger off and be happy with only one cut per sheet to allow you to fit the stuff into your car.

Which explains why I was so gobsmacked by the MDF guy at Homebase Finchley Road this evening. I mean it was late—pretty near closing time—but this guy was professional, courteous, helpful I just don’t get it? He cut a jillion slices of all different sizes and thicknesses, didn’t charge me for off-cuts, I mean if I didn’t know better, I’d of thought I was in a Frank Capra movie:-)

Oh, and about the lawyers… I just wanted to add, I have just spend 30 minutes playing with that giant cutting machine. That’s right, I was behind the counter, chewing the fat with guy, helping shlep the timber, inches away from the giant cutting jaws, I mean, where are the lawyers;-)