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.

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.