We are a little too used, here at Shrewsday Mansions, at finding ourselves the wrong side of a locked door. A repost today recalling a three-floor Houdini extravaganza of an escape attempt, masterminded by the ever resourceful Phil…
Every job has the perfect tool.
Which is why some jobs simply don’t get done in our house.
The biggest screwdriver came in extremely handy a couple of years ago, when Phil locked himself and the children into the top floor of our house.
The people previously living in our illustrious mansion were a bit security sensitive, and every door in the house seemed to have a self-closing lock.
Once, back in the mists of time, there were keys, but they had long ago excused themselves, and gone on key vacation.
It was bedtime, and Phil was reading a story to the kids when he heard an ominous slam.
I was vacuuming downstairs, and switched the Hoover off to hear faint but unmistakable bawling coming from above.
Phil was locked in, he told me in a tetchy conference through a closed door. I needed to find something to force the lock.
Force the lock? I needed my iPhone translation programme immediately. Or a Babel Fish.
Phil began to realise that the key to attaining a miracle, and getting himself out with some form of help from me, was to get me to find The Perfect Tool.
Once it had been secured, we must transport it from me, in the garden on the ground floor, to him, marooned on the top floor of our very tall house, through a velux attic window.
Simple.
We hit almost immediately on The Big Screwdriver as the tool of choice. I went to the Man Drawer, and there it lay, waiting for its big moment. I took a deep breath and picked it up.
The next challenge was the garden-to-attic-window stage. In a post-modernist parody of Romeo and Juliet, Phil egged me on from the highest aperture in the house.
He lowered a weighted stretch of Granny Norma’s famous bright red wool into the garden. I seem to remember a toy car did the trick, holding the wool down as it dangled towards me in the growing gloom.
I obediently tied the screwdriver onto it and it rose into the air, mounting the odd loud, cracking assault on a patio window here, a pane looking out from the bedroom there, until it completed its ascent.
It took less than a minute for the thug in Phil to manhandle his way out.
Writers still have tools too.
I have a battered old pocket Oxford dictionary, long out of date. I found it in an Oxfam shop for £1.99, and it is the fifth edition published in 1967. I love it because it is hardback, and because it has the fusty air of an Eton schoolmaster: and finally, because of the sound the pages make when they fall open. A sort of ‘flupp’.
I love the tweedy definitions of yesteryear, from my old Oxford. It says a tool is something designed to help or enable the hand to use force.
It talks about dressing stone with chisels, and impressing designs on leather and book covers with skivers and bevelers. This is a craftsman’s world, where each device helps to add impact in its specialised way.
The tools writers use are designed to have impact too. Like other craftsmen, they have their favourite implements with which to do so.
One of my favourite tools is allegory: a narrative describing one subject- under the guise of another.
Something disguised as something else.
So John Bunyan’s seventeenth century Christian is really just everyman, and his journey to the celestial city is the path to heaven.
And George Orwell’s Animal Farm is in fact Stalinist Russia, with all its flaws.
My favourite allegory of all time is a little known land called the land of Bism. You may have come across it: it is tucked away in CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, in The Silver Chair.
A prince has been imprisoned under a spell in an underground kingdom, manned by small, pale drones and ruled by a glittering emerald Queen.
The enchantment is broken, the queen deposed, and the kingdom, built in tunnels underground, begins to crumble.
Great fiery chasms open up in the floor. And to the amazement of the prince and his rescuers, the little drones begin to cheer and jump in.
It appears that they are natives of a land beneath the mines, a blazing kingdom of fire. In this world, diamonds are living. They are not dead things mined from the earth’s crust. Instead they grow on trees, vibrant and alive.
This allegory can be read a little differently for each reader- that is its joy.
But I try not to settle for dead diamonds any more.
Kate Shrewsday 
It has been far too long since I have read your posts! Delightful catching up with one tonight. (Because it IS only night where I am!) What’s the perfect tool then? For me – patience, in most cases.
HI Stef! How lovely to hear from you! Glad you enjoyed this vintage read, and patience – ain’t that the truth…
This is a good reason to remove all locks! Glad to see you are a Douglas Adams fan 🙂
Man was a genius, Tandy….
I’m very keen on zeugma, as in “Mr.Jones took his coat and his leave”:)
The very height of elegant wit, Roger, I agree…
For some reason Kate, I was humming The Great Escape, while I read this. Great ingenuity and a great link. I own a Oxford Reverse dictionary: its huge, but very useful.
how does that work? Intriguing
Reverse dictionaries organise their words in different order to alphabetical, Pseu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_dictionary
Thank you Kate….
and now look what I’ve found…
http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml
They are wonderful, Helen: lateral-thinking tomes 🙂
Another gem (jemmy?) from you pen! As if the hilarious levitation of the screwdriver wasn’t enough, we also have the allegory excursion. I enjoyed!
Glad to hear it, Col. Bism is probably my favourite metaphor.
I do indeed love my tools, I have socket sets, screwdrivers, hammers, all kinds of little doohickies that have never seen the light of day outside their lovely packaging. I also have 2 drills, only because I bought one when I forgot that I already had one; now I have two lovely new drills that will, of course, be used to their fullest at some time in the future. Truth be told, most all of my tools are still virgins, but, tomorrow’s another day and that big project is just around the corner. Maybe I’ll take a photo of my virgin tools so they’ll feel good about themselves.
I think that’s an excellent idea, Lou. What great projects await you, I wonder….
What a lovely read this morning.. and what’s not to love about someone inventing the perfect solution to a problem! My favorite tool.. is my off-set spatula in the kitchen.. followed closely by my measuring cups .. wait! No.. papers.. pens.. computers.. xo Smidge
Spatulas…how they have made leaps and bounds with all the new synthetic materials, Smidge! I agree – both of those are perfect tools…
The writer’s tools; what fun. I particularly love puns and other word play, and I just found: Did you hear Mary Poppins retired to California and became a really good astrologer? Apparently, she specializes in helping people with bad breath. Her shingle reads: “Super California Mystic – Expert: Halitosis.” 🙂
OY!!
Karen, that is hilarious.
Loved it. Thanks, Karen.
LOL Fabulous, Karen 😀
I got stuck on the flupp of thick books full of thin pages… I might need to pull out my Norton Anthology of English Literature from prep school, just to hear the sound.
We’ll pass the days flupping happily, Cameron 😀
Memories came flooding back of being locked in a bathroom at a relative’s house when I was seven. A houseful of relatives and every man in the house trying to pick the lock. Scared and mortified, I wanted out, whilst I also wanted to stay in. tee hee
Oh, you know me, Kate, and how I love old dictionaries. Flupp. I think I’ll go flupp through one now.
Enjoy the fluppage, Penny 😀
Like Penny above, I also locked myself in a bathroom at a relative’s house that ultimately required the removal of the door to save me. I couldn’t follow anyone’s shouted instructions for unlocking the door.
Man Drawers are frightening places, aren’t they? I avoid them at all costs. 🙂
I know….and so puzzling…I can never find what I am asked to fetch…
Wonderful wander, Kate . . . nothing like flipping tomes open with a resounding {{flupp}}.
oops . . . flipping tomes open with
From screwdrivers to diamonds, you do use your tools well, Kate.
🙂 Thanks Banno. It’s really lovely to have you back. Those boys in your film – they look wonderful, as do those vast mountains…
Since this is a repost, I wonder if you’ve yet changed those tricky locks? You were all quite ingenious in getting the super-tool into the chamber! I would have enjoyed watching that orchestration! The tie-in to writer’s tools is just great…you are a craftsman! Debra