Well the last time I remember some fancy dan golf day sponsored by Butler Sheetmetal - well, it wasn’t really a golf day so much as John and Matt dragging me off up our local municipal course, Marsden Park, to hank, shank and slice with gay abandon. Ten quid for the round and a jumbo Mars Bar, which had obviously softened somewhat by the time I got round to needing its nougaty nourishment around the tenth, was the full extent of their corporate hospitality.

Things must be going ’slightly better’ these days as they can afford to take a full Monday off to go swanning around some course in Harrogate with eight clients. So yes, if you didn’t get invited - like me (not that I would’ve gone - although I could’ve had a round over here on my own) - I suggest you kick up a bit of a stink by giving them a bell on 01282 870033 or leaving an irate comment below.

But, with any luck they may have stiffened up a bit (in the bad way) and be feeling the odd back twinge - a bit like this fella who’d been sub-contracted to do a spot of welding at Castle Cement in Clitheroe. As the Lancashire Evening Telegraph points out:

A WORKER had to be rescued after getting trapped in a pipe at a factory when he suffered back pain.

The 27-year-old, who was working as a contractor for Castle Cement at its site in West Bradford Road, Clitheroe, became stranded after his back “went” while welding.

Chris Fish, Castle’s safety officer, said the welder was working in a duct in a piece of machinery called a “scrubber tower”, which is used to make plaster.

He said: “The lad told me earlier that he had a twinge in his back and then when he was working in it just went.

“The duct is only just over a metre high and he could hardly move.”

Fire crews used an aerial ladder platform to free the worker at 2.15pm.

I bet he’d been sprauncing around at some golf day a couple of days earlier as well.

Let’s hope the medical cabinet at BSM HQ has an abundance of fiery jack.

A curious instinct tells me I should make Steph get out more. Whether I give her a key or up her housekeeping are a couple of options I’m pondering.

The problem with her doing bits and bobs for me is that she’s very easily distracted. I should know seeming I’m forever having my tract dissed. Once in a while she’ll concoct a scheme or get diverted by an online interest that is, well, remotely interesting.

Of late, she’s been getting into all things Tesla - the first time she mentioned a Tesla Coil I replied that they wouldn’t come cheap at the Family Planning Clinic. Then again, cracking woofers like that and I should be slightly worried about her tapping me up to be the hamster in this particular Tesla cage:

If you like electrical and scientific wonderments - and if you don’t then you’re a bit odd - the Tesla site I found that on has loads of other amazing Tesla-related stuff you can replicate (or not) in your back garden.

I may show you some of the more exciting stuff at a later date, but something I did come across was these Bernoulli Balls:

And this stainless steel Bernoulli Ball:

Now the weird thing is, round about the same time I was being Tesla’d 24/7 by Steph and checking various Tesla sites out, we received an inquiry at Butler Sheetmetal about a stainless steel ball sculpture that bored little oiks kept knocking off its perch:

Stainless Steel Ball Sculpture

And they wanted to know if the boys could do something to ensure the thing remained upright for long enough for people to enjoy it. It’s not too much to ask, is it?

Obviously, with Bernoulli Balls in mind, I suggested an oversized leaf blower and some elongated industrial straws for balance. Personally I thought it was a bit of inspired genius.

They just told me to stick to the blogging. Fair enough fellas.

Hopefully I’ll have something to show you once it’s done to show you how they did it.

I really don’t anticipate any Benny Hill-esque chase routines as they try to fix it and it goes hurtling off down some field.

Not that any of them would catch it, mind.

Nothing says Happy Birthday quite like a quickly rustled together blog post.

Happy Birthday, John.

Apparently he’s forty whatever and I don’t doubt he’ll be celebrating by getting his lanky backside whooped by Dean at squash Friday night and then having some kind of birthday tea on Sunday with my Grandma having to toil all weekend over her meringues.

She’ll be 90 this year, y’know. It really is time my sister learned how to make the damn things. But, considering her answer to doing anything in the kitchen is to turn the oven up to its highest setting thinking things will cook slightly faster, then it’s probably best my Grandma sticks to getting up at 5am.

Besides all these chronological milestones, we’ve also got Butler Sheetmetal turning ten this year. It really is a decade since they roped me in to scrape my knuckles raw taking Victorian-era plaster off walls for nothing and I’m still doing the metaphorical equivalent writing this blooming blog.

I know, ’tis a hard knock life.

But, when you’ve built not only a business over ten years, but also had a hand in the revamping of your premises, it’s understandable if there’s a bit of emotional attachment to a place. Saying that, it’s still something of a hell hole. Perhaps it’s a certain emotional attachment that’s kept the original sign up outside the place for the past ten years:

BSM HQ replete with next door’s gypsy ice cream van and dodgy yellow peril.

Then again, it’s probably them just being tight.

Whether they move to their new place that’s almost finished, or whether they get chance to expand further into the bowels of former foundry hell and rent the new place to somebody will depend purely on what makes most business sense. Obviously.

Oh, and having a next door neighbour who doesn’t park rickety old ice cream vans blocking access to the front door may be the clincher.

Mono-browed Muppets.

Anybody shocked by this seemingly vicious rise in iron ore prices?

Aren’t you glad I showed you how to smelt your own yesterday?

Ever since moving to my apartment here in Wheeling I’ve had intermittent internet service at best and a downright lousy connection at worst. It doesn’t flitter like a wonky fluorescent tube as much as completely disappear in one solid chunk for most of the day. I wouldn’t care to hazard a guess as to how often it happens, but last weekend it went awol.

It went down most of Friday evening, all of Saturday, and an appreciable chunk of Sunday. Steph rang Comcast to get somebody to take a look and they promised to send a cable guy on Monday. In the meantime I had to put up with internet service on a par with half of India and most of the Middle East. Although it’s news to me that the Ohio river stretches all the way to Sri Lanka and off to Iran.

And whilst we’re on the subject of long stretches and Sri Lanka - our resident Scottish barrel of giggles at Butler Sheetmetal, Jasper, is currently there for his daughter’s wedding. I presume he’s back as the furthest and longest he’s ever gone for a holiday is a wild weekend in Blackpool. Oh to think of the pasty-faced mumbly grumbler sweating his little lardy backside off in one of the most humid places known to man. Any normal mortal working at Butler Sheetmetal is quite accustomed to the place being dark, dank and below zero during your average heatwave, but Jasper has a genetic predisposition to such conditions and scurries about aimlessly when exposed to sunlight.

You know, a bit like a confused woodlouse when you lift up a mouldy brick.

But I think his vacation has been adequately covered by the new lad - Cain. Apparently, to all extents and purposes, the last guy we had was a bit too ‘aerospace’ and had to return to cleaner pastures - make of that what you will, people. Now you may glibly enquire whether Cain is a relative . He’s not, but he is the son of John’s next door neighbour, which could be anybody in Trawden. But, you’ve got to ask the question seeming people round our end get called Dingles after the workshy, ne’er-do well inbreds on Emmerdale Farm (sorry, Emmerdale), whether employing a lad called Cain isn’t playing up to our national stereotype?

Thank God they didn’t call him Shadrach.

Cain’s in the chair (on the left)

Anyway, getting back to the internet outage - according to our 476th cable guy, there’d been Dingle-esque shenanigans going on in that somebody added an extra splitter and was siphoning off our internet. And if it wasn’t our downstairs neighbours being shifty then one of the previous cable guys had been tremendously dumb.

ALLEGEDLY!