Today’s post was going to be about Daniela’s delicious Anzac biscuits but we ate them all before I could take a photo.

Still, I’m doing a few jobs around the house at the moment – nothing too complicated, just painting the bathroom and sticking up a rather cheap and cheerful post box from Bunnings (these jobs will not be photographed as the standard of execution is a bit . . . basic). But at the moment, as a fresh new blogger, everything seems to take on the potential to be the subject of a new post. So these tasks have me thinking about the pleasures of making stuff.

I’ve always loved creating things and tinkering with other things. As kids, my mates and I would always have projects on the go: building tree houses and digging fox holes, casting lead fishing sinkers out of old car batteries, building model boats and fabricating go-karts and rafts.

At Gifford Technical High School in Bulawayo, we were introduced to real workshops – and the real men who ran them. Mr Pate (woodwork), Mr Lafrenz (engineering/drawing), and Mr Brine (metalwork). 

Mr Lafrenz (“Laffy”) was a large, bald man in his 60s, who used his lovingly-maintained lathe and milling machine to create astounding things out of solid metal – while delivering anecdotes and tall tales about the virtues of knowing how to make stuff. We sniggered as he related how fabricating tools from scrap helped POWs escape from Colditz in World War Two – we were in the ‘A’ stream and wouldn’t need these skills to become accountants and PR consultants. 

But Laffy was a lot smarter than we gave him credit for: faced with a class of pre-pubescent sceptics, he assigned us the simple task of making a ‘name plate’ by filing a piece of mild steel into a perfect rectangle. For a triple period once a week, we clamped bit of metal into a vice and went at it with a file. When we thought we had a perfect corner, we’d ask Laffy to check it with a 90-degree engineer’s square. He always found a chink of light that meant we’d have to start again – and in the whole year, we made nothing but piles of iron filings. 

Mr Pate, or “Ron” as we dared to call him out of his earshot, was just as exacting when it came to getting it right. “Measure twice, cut once” was his mantra and it still echoes in my ears when painting a bathroom or installing a post box. He was conscientious about maintaining his tools, carefully sharpening and oiling the chisels we’d used to hack a crude mortise joint and bellowing with fearful, operatic volume at any idle revving of his precious electric sander. Ron crafted exquisite violins entirely by hand, and under his guidance, the senior boys made impressive pieces of furniture for their woodwork ‘O’ levels.

Together, Ron and Laffy built the school’s cricket pavilion – an astounding achievement given the limited resources at their disposal. And younger, cooler Mr Brine made the fancy ‘wishbone’ rugby posts that graced the main field. His method of controlling us was to demonstrate the frankly fearsome crossbow he’d built using a car leaf spring by firing a pencil through the blackboard – we remained awestruck for the rest of the year. 

The desire to be “making stuff” provided me with my first honest employment – subject of another post someday, perhaps – and still gets me itching to break out the tools and get busy. I hope those fine men who tolerated us in their workshops back in the ‘70s would be pleased that their example still has force. I wasn’t at the time, but I’m grateful now. 

(Photo by Gabriel Manlake on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@osomax)