Faq Part 7
FAQ for newsgroup uk.rec.sheds, version 2&2/7th 1999-11-08 (roughly)
Ride of the Shedheads Theme Tune
Part 7 of 8 : Inventory, clubs, pics
"Inventory?"
To paraphrase William Morris: You should only have in your shed those
objects which you know to be hfrful or believe to be beautiful.
{beauty and hfrfularff are of course, in the eye of the beholder}
The cobbler's last is an item beloved of all sheddists. It's believed
that the 3 armed type actually has a 4th arm orthogonal to the other 3
which extends into hyperspace and is not visible in our 3 dimensional
world.
A copy of Exchange&Mart, preferably at least a year old, takes pride of
place in many a shed. Those outside the UK must, of course, make do
with their nearest local equivalent. In emergencies it's possible to
substitute items such as the 1985 What Camera? Buyer's Guide.
Actually, any out-of-date catalogue will do, though the more obscure
items it has in it, the better. It seems that every shedder on the group
has a copy of the Hawkin Bazaar catalogue - a current one! A partial
copy of this is at http://www.hawkin.co.uk/ Check out the pop-pop boat!
Various containers partly full of various liquids greatly enhance any
shed. The most obvious choices are part used paint cans, but so poorly
labelled that in fact you'll never find the right one for that bit of
touching up on the dining room wainscoting, or if you do it'll be full
of rust. Most of the real shed experts will have some Hammerite around
somewhere. And it's obvious, I hope, that one cannot survive past the
age of 30 without owning a can of WD40 or one of the close equivalents,
although it's normal to lose the plastic straw.
Of course every shedder has a least one Stanley knife, however it
appears to be a universal fact that you can never find it when you want
it. Some theorists believe that they gravitate through the shed-space
continuum to reappear down the back of Bob's sofa, but Bob strongly
denies this.
A collection of tobacco tins full of partially sorted screws, nails,
bolts, etc is a must: though some prefer to have the tins and the stuff
that ought to fill them, but never quite get around to getting the two
together....
For special storage needs, it's been suggested that a Klein bottle could
be made by sewing together two Moebius bands, along their single edge.
Can't say I've tried this one.
"Affiliated Organisations?"
SOBAR (not quite sober), the Society Of Brown Ale Revivalists
Membership open to all who enjoy a pint of something dark.
http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sobar/ for a very poor web page.
The International Goatkeepers Society
You may join at the personal invitation of bill (skelm@worldnet.att.net)
The Junior Bloody Club
Membership is open to any who had interesting or amusing extreme
physical trauma as a child. Copious amounts of blood would normally be
required to qualify, but anything that makes your mother faint would do.
The League Against Cruel Cats
You'll know if you're a member of this one - you'll have the scars.
The OETKB club - well, were you Old Enough To Know Better when you did
that really stupid thing that led to injury (or at least, major
embarrassment) ?
"What Else?"
C++ is something of a sheddy language: full of bits you don't really
need but which might come in useful one day, not easy to get into, and
anything you do want will be impossible to find as it will be buried
under several layers of inherited classes in an include file called from
another include file.....
Frank Sidebottom apparently records his records and radio shows in a
shed in his mum's garden.
Linda Casey reminds us of a radio programme called "Our Shed" -
"Aahh - but things are different there!" Max Wall would cry dramatically
"Where?" he would be asked.
"Our Shed" he would reply in a soppy kid's voice.
"'Ere, it's everso nice in there..."
The May/June 95 issue of The Idler had a good article about sheds.
You can find a copy at http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds/shedhvn.txt
Thanks to Pete Shaw for bringing it to the newsgroup's attention.
uk.rec.sheds archaeologists and historians frequently dispute the
origins of the shed, which seem to stretch back into pre-history.
However:
Dragons used to sit on hoards of stuff;
there's a dragon on the Welsh flag;
there are some fine sheds in Wales with excellent tqt collections.
If the dinosaurs managed to evolve into birds, maybe dragons evolved
into sheds?
According to Jenny Woolf, Lynn Tate of The Old Foundry, Leigh On Sea,
SS9 2EP tel01702 471737 is doing greetings cards featuring sheds AND
they're on the lookout for more sheds to immortalise. What kind of
greeting you'd put on such a card is somewhat hard to imagine.
There were several other things I meant to put in this file, but I can't
offhand remember which pile of stuff I left them in. Maybe next time.
Some of the posts from the pre-newsgroup threads can be found at:
http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds Naturally those files are half
sorted. I've put the charter and faq there too, and there's a few JPEGs
of various people's sheds in there as well. Send me some more.
Here's one: http://gepasi.dbs.aber.ac.uk/ROY/shed.htm
And there's several here: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~cn237
andy the pugh mentions that images of himself, Gaye, Mike Fleming, Gaz
and Mark Neil and glimpses of Gaz's collection of fine welsh sheds may
be found at http://www1.psi.ch/~reid/aber.html
Ian Roderic Izett has pictures of one of his sheds and its contents on
his web page at http://www.aber.ac.uk/~iri
Bob Goddard has a nice shed web page at :-
http://www.godwit.demon.co.uk/sheds.html
Stop by and see the contents of his shed and some nice piccies of his
Stanley knife. Unfortunately there is no picture of his enigmatic sofa.
Joe Tozer finally and circuitously JPEG'd a fine shed which can now be
seen at: http://www.tozer.demon.co.uk/shed.jpg