Hollow achievement

Herbert Hollow, shaped like a square block of wood, was our woodwork teacher and I was his worst pupil.

“When you are using the plane, make sure you go with the grain,” Mr Hollow told our class, pointing out some pattern on the piece of wood he was holding in his leathery, square hand.

He began demonstrating. Then he asked:  “Any questions?” I quickly thought up one: “Should we move our body as we push the plane along the wood?” By a fluke, I hit the jackpot. He congratulated me: “Good question!”

That was the first and last compliment I ever received from Herbert Hollow. I could not blame him.  My interest in carpentry matched my interest in mechanics—nil. My ability was minus nil.

When we started using the plane, I could never figure out which way the grain went. If there was a pattern, surely the grain could go either way.

Instrument of torture: the woodworking plane (Photo" Wikimedia)

Apparently not. My wood always ended up with chips out of the edge.  I turned the wood around and tried pushing the plane along it in the other direction.  I spent most of my mornings making the piece of wood smaller and smaller.

Every time  I smoothed one edge, I saw a chip on the other side. Then I tried in vain to to flatten out strangely undulating surfaces.

“Ow!”I got a splinter in my finger and couldn’t get it out.

“Hold your hand out,” said Mr Hollow, approaching me.

Was I going to get the cuts? No. He produced a sharp blade and expertly extracted the sliver of wood. It didn’t hurt at all. But, for some unknown reason, I fainted. When I woke up, I knew my credibility was also going to take a dive.

Apron

“We will now do dove-tail joints,” proclaimed Mr Hollow, reaching for a chisel in deep in his carpenter’s apron.

Along with the others, I grabbed my own chisel and tried to copy what he had demonstrated. But one side of the joint was always out of whack with the other. Nobody else seemed to have the same problem. My dove-tail became like a fantail and would wobble– the very thing it shouldn’t do.

Instrument of torture #2 (Photo: Wikimedia)

Outside class, I could hammer in a nail, use an axe to cut up totara blocks, and slice up kindling with a tomahawk.

But I never mastered the humble chisel or that hated oblong of wood with the steel tongue, the wood plane.

Somehow, though, I joined the others in completing our introductory piece of carpentry: a “matchbox holder”.

It was an item with a central pillar on which people were supposed to slide the matchbox. They remained unused in my parents’ living rooms for years, looking like some strange mini-altar from an Aztec kingdom.

Aztec altars? No, matchbox holders.

Announcement

One day Herbert Hollow had an announcement: “We are now moving on to the major projects of the year.”

He gave some boys the job of building stepladders and others a round table.

Mr Hollow, a short, square man with a short, square crew cut, then came up to me, and said: “You (pause) you will be making (pause) a tray.”

It was a strange experience for me, a good academic performer, to be the worst woodwork pupil that had ever existed in the Hollowsphere.

After a few weeks, we displayed our work. The stepladders worked perfectly, and the tables looked good too. My simple tray was just an oblong board, which had gaps purposely left between the wooden edges and ends so that crumbs could be brushed out.

“I will now put up the marks,” said Mr Hollow, using his hammer and a tack to put up the list, a copy of which would go back to St Joseph’s to be entered on our school reports.

We crowded around to read what we had been awarded.

The boys who made the best stepladders got “ Excellent”.  Lots of others got “Very Good”. Then there was a sprinkling of “Good”.

I found my name quickly. There next to it was the mark awarded specially and only to me. “Fair”.

The funny thing was that in later years I never saw the stepladders or tables in use in the homes of any of my friends.

But when Mum had guests, she would take out the tray and load it up with her special china and a plate of scones, and tell everybody: “Michael made this!”

Be bold, be bald

(Published by The West Australian in The West Magazine)

Bald swimmers regularly prove a point at international competitions by often being head and shoulders above rivals afflicted with scalp hair.

Champion Aussie swimmers Grant Hackett (left) and Michael Klim (right) will no doubt persuade Nicholas Springer (centre) to thow off his cap and expose his baldness.

The more male a man is the less hair he will have on his head, a fact attested to by scientists.

They tell us that a large potent drop of the male hormone, androgen, will eventually eliminate unwanted growth around the brain. This explains why women are seldom hairless—up top anyway.

At the Olympics, you will note that many of the male swimming stars are either bald or have shaved their heads to achieve that sexy status.

Many other men are now imitating those voluntarily-bald sports gods and the men whom nature has gifted with the gem of genetic baldness.

Increasing numbers  of men are demanding “number one” or “number two” haircuts from their barbers. This is throwing the wig and snake-oil hucksters into a spin.

An aggressive radio advertising campaign has been launched, claiming that shiny –scalps are avoiding mirrors and refusing to face facts about hair loss.

But chrome-domes know that the words “hair loss” are being used as desperate money-raking spin to try to downgrade the fantastic achievement of scalp-gain.

There is no dandruff for a bloke with a bald bonce. No nits surround a cleanskin either—except for those on hirsute hobgoblins who make jealous jibes.

Women, of course, have known about the sexy secret of bald men for years. The unfortunate females stuck with a partner afflicted with head growth look in envy at those women with the sly and satisfied smiles, the wives and girlfriends of the bald barons of the bedroom.

Sean Connery, the flower of the baldroom

For years women have named Sean Connery (“the name is Bald, James Bald”) as the world’s sexiest man. When he joins the angels (ever seen a hairy angel?), his replacement will be bald Bruce Willis.

Nature  endowed many of the greatest political figures, from Gandhi to Gorbachev, with shining heads clear of scrub. They were in great contrast to, for example, the hairy Hitler and Stalin with that shaggy atrocity.

Look at Salman Rushdie and his procession of beautiful admirers. They love him as much for his baldness as his books.

Baldness acts like a magnet for Salman Rushdie

It is written in the Bible: “Doth not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him.” The world “long” means “any”.

It is a filthy lie that Homer had a comb-over. Or that he used Grecian 2000 (BC). Like the great Olympian heroes, the great poet crowned his nude nut with a laurel wreath.

William Shakespeare, known to all humanity as the bald bard, once described how nature counterbalanced beauty with ugliness: “Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; clouds and eclipses stain moon and sun.”

"To be bald or not to be bald, there is no question: BE BALD!" (Wm Shakespeare)

Only smooth Shakespeare’s sensitivity to the feelings of the follicled fools prevented him adding: “Some men’s heads are defiled by unsightly locks.”

Throughout the ages, those virile men without hair on their heads have remained modest, knowing their superiority. They have not wanted to make the bushy feel bad. But things have changed recently after the sight of so many champions baldly claiming victory.

Let there be no beating about the bush, no splitting of hairs. It is time to glorify the naked scalp.  Now is the moment to make a bald assertion.