So in I popped to Radio Shack (which is the American equivalent of Tandy – RIP) to ask them about an outdoor antenna set up for receiving over-the-air HD. It’s better than your average cable or satellite signal, and it’s free (the signal, not the antenna). I’m also loathe to pay a premium to my cable company for the privilege of viewing whatever lame reality series involving dwarves and giants swapping places to see what things would be like in the other freak’s shoes – probably a bit tight if you were the giant I’d imagine.

Anyway, as I sauntered into the store the manager asked the now customary question referring to my origins. He hadn’t said hello before he mentioned Flight 93 – y’know the one that exploded over Lockerbie. Apparently, he should’ve been on that flight, but his mother hadn’t got the tickets to him in time.

How odd. I’ve no idea whether it was the guy’s near death experience or a minus 17 gust of arctic air from not closing the door that sent a shiver down my spine; but I still didn’t buy an antenna.

As if I’m going up on the roof in this weather – I’ll wind up doing a Rod Hull.

Considering we’re on the subject of bizarre things linked to television, how would you pitch Butler Sheetmetal to TV types embarking on a spot of research to see whether you might be willing to appear in some new reality show being flushed down the pipeline about recently fired bankers having to get their hands dirty at a proper place of work?

A muck vs. brass corporate wife swap during times of class war.

Thankfully, we have this blog to flesh the bones of an otherwise skinny little outfit.

While I don’t write about everybody in equal measure, there are those at Butler Sheetmetal HQ who lend themselves more easily to blog ridicule than others.

Senior Butler brother, Matt, only gets mentioned in passing, whereas as the more junior John gets mentioned quite a bit. But even John is overshadowed by Jock bundle of joy Jasper. The BBC could do far worse than waste license payer’s money on reincarnating the ghost of Pvt Frazer.

The blurred boys and girl at Butler Sheetmetal: Phil, Deborah, Jasper, John and Matt.

So, if you just so happen to be researching to see what kind of characters you might be dealing with just click on any of the following names: Matt, John, Jasper, Deborah or Phil and see what this blogs turns up.

We’ve even got a new lad called Simeon (pronounced Simon, not Gideon), but I’ve no idea whether he’s got a face more suited the radio.

Anyway, if it does transpire – some banker kick-starting a new career up our place – I hope they don’t think it’s going to be a cushy office job.

This credit collapse/meltdown/armageddon is a curious one to fathom. Do you not think? What are you lot seeing and hearing?

It seems like any response seems wholly inappropriate. For example, if you acknowledge there’s a squeeze going on but then follow up with how it isn’t affecting you and you’re bucking the trend, you’re a bit of an arse. Or, if you’re carrying on like you’re Prince circa 1999, you’re a bit more of an arse. And then if you race around like a financial Chicken Little, you’re an arse that’s on fire.

Now I received this email earlier today that falls into a category all of its own:

To say that 2008 didn’t come without its challenges would be an understatement. To say the New Year won’t bring new ones would be an overstatement. We’ve been there. We understand. ThomasNet.com is part of a larger organization that has survived, among other things, two World Wars and one major Depression. Experience has taught us how to navigate rocky roads and how to help businesses like yours do the same. This time is no exception.

To that end, we’d like to pass along some tips that can impact your bottom line as you consider and develop the upcoming year’s strategies:

• Evaluate your current suppliers to secure a healthy supply chain that will keep your operations moving

• Find out if your parts or products can be sourced locally to minimize shipping costs

• Keep up with new product releases to remain competitive and inspire new ideas

• Consult white papers to research new processes and technologies

• Grow your business without expanding your sales force

Now I’m sure Thomas.net are being well meaning here but maybe they could’ve added a bit more gravitas by invoking the spirit of Churchill as opposed to an England football chant. Still, as if I know what it’s like to steer a steady ship in choppy waters. I’d barely started my tea-time paper round when the Falklands kicked-off.

I’ll accept this is shaping up to be fairly swift and merciless, and there’s many a sheet metal fabrication or engineering shop shut down or dead round our neck of the woods. But the chaps were telling me over Christmas they’ve never known a busier potential January. It’s always been a quiet month, so they simply can’t work out where the upsurge has come from. In fact, straight after the credit crunch crunched, everything ground to an immediate halt – they were even looking at having a full two weeks shut down over Christmas and New Year. But that didn’t even transpire.

Maybe it’s a case of companies having held off for a couple of months and we’re only seeing what we would’ve seen in October. Maybe the pond’s a little smaller and people are having to look for new suppliers. Although I doubt it’s got much to do with tumbling steel costs.

Still, an unseasonably busy January a full 2009 does not make, so maybe it is time to batten down the hatches, dig in and roll those sleeves up.

Thomas.net, while a bit austere, could be right on the money.

In terms of our marketing, not only am I omnipotent but I also have a certain omnipresence. By this, I mean I track every single email as it bounces about between all concerned parties. More often than not it just means I hold an extra saved copy of an email, but every now and again I’m forced to intervene if something looks a little wonky.

Library Photo of average Nigerian scammer

I’ll let Deborah, who performs sterling secretarial and accounting services from Butler Sheetmetal HQ, take over the telling of one particular instance of such an intervention from a few weeks back. She sent me the following email about some nefarious Nigerian:

Well, it all started yesterday morning when I arrived to start my duties in the meter cupboard.  Matt asked me to ring [name removed so as to protect the innocent] to take payment for an urgent job. I read the original email enquiry and it had scam written all over it, but Matt had promised we’d ring back.  So, I rang Michael who told me the normal procedure for making payment was for me to give him our bank details. I told him he’d have to pay by credit card and he said he would have to apply for one! In the meantime I had to go through all the rigmarole of getting a price from TNT to deliver to Lagos to be able to do a proper quote. TNT quoted £1323.00 to deliver to Lagos Airport, but they weren’t prepared to take it from the airport to its final destination. Twas a lot of messing about.  Any road up, I think we’ve shaken him off now. Suppose there’s an outside chance he could have been genuine, but my gut instinct says not.

Anyway, back to deal with more fools and time wasters respected potential customers.

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for some of our African cousins in some respects. Especially those round Nigeria, Ghana or the Ivory Coast whose major export appears to be the scam. Let’s be fair, your average Nigerian has a worse scam rep than the notorious 19th century confidence trickster, Soapy Smith.

Bad lad Soapy Smith

So let that be a lesson to anybody thinking of pulling a fast one.

Then again, things are a bit quiet by all accounts, so we could do with the work!

Welder in Space

Because I’m as dimwitted as the rest of you, my first thoughts on learning that space had some sort of aroma led me to dismissing the concept out of hand. We all know there’s no air for starters and that anyone daft enough to open their helmet for a sly whiff would wind up covering the inside of it with their own explosive grey matter within thirty seconds.

Then again, I suppose it helps if you read an article rather than draw mindless conclusions from just the headline. If we dig a little deeper we find:

“We have a few clues as to what space smells like. First of all, there were interviews with astronauts that we were given, when they had been outside and then returned to the space station and were de-suiting and taking off their helmets, they all reported quite particular odours. For them, what comes across is a smell of fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike.”

Apparently the perfume scientist quoted above is from Manchester and has been approached by NASA to reproduce the same space odour so that astronauts can train their nostrils for the peculiar pong.

And this is what the International Space Station’s Science Officer Don Pettit had to say about the smell after a spell up yonder in 2003:

“Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn’t quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as ‘tastes like chicken.’ The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation.”

So, the smell we’re looking at is something akin to hot metal, fried steak, and welding a motorbike. How bizarre.

But, help could very well be at hand. Just follow me here, NASA, as I think we may be able to come to some kind of arrangement.

This is similar to the aroma that wafts from Jasper on any average Friday afternoon after the weekly chippy run and he’s got a bit of steak pie stuck in his whiskers. If he happens to do a spot of welding at the same time….BLAMMO – there’s your space scent right there.

Although, if he’s been on the cooking sherry the night before having watched Braveheart, he smells more like a tramp dipped in trifle.

Either way, just give us a bell, and we’ll give your pong police full access at our going rate.

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.