Everything in its place

Shed (noun): a simple roofed structure used for garden storage, to shelter animals or as a workshop.

Yet words do not give meaning to objects -we impart that ourselves. Define “dog” and you'll understand what I mean. The definition almost obscures the object itself. A much beloved pet and Dorothy's companion on the road to Oz both equal the same three letters; but one could easily be a Dachshund and the other one Toto. The same applies with shed's.

Shed as Rorschach inkblot: Some might only see a chaotic mess and wonder the origin of all the mis-matched jam jars and tins Others would perceive the answers to a generation of questions; an intricate tapestry that it would take a lifetime to unwind; a tool for every purpose, however obscure.

Gramps' shed -and this is where the memories merge, and for this I'll let them. For the purpose, this is a homage, a collective to all the many shed's I've known and a mourning. One handed down as hereditary rite of passage.

Tools can be bought, true, but like Excalibur the best are handed down through generations. Experiences as children mark the tools, sweat soaks into the handle imbibing them with life-force until the day comes that they finally are handed down. But no ceremony is needed, all the actions within the shed are sacred enough, the work worthy of Hephaestus himself.

So the shed becomes a church, a sacred space -one of the few bastions of masculinity, linked to ancient rites; every act a ritual. Leave the political correctness at the door, alongside your ego, and allow men to be men. This is not about emancipation or subjection, here women are as equals -as much as they would wish to be, but they will never be one with the tools, unless they have been bequeathed.

My mother, in Gramps later years, spent as much time in the shed as he and now it has passed on to her. She has been accepted; but had it not been done gradual and properly then it is quite possible that harm could have been done to either. The tools could easily have been blunted or broken, or turned against their masters. Just as swords owe allegiances to their samurai masters, so do all other hand-crafted tools.

There's a certain, hard to define smell that all sheds have, despite all of them being completely different, that reflect back the personality of the owner.

I find smells elusive. I tried to describe the smell of the shed earlier and it slipped away, like sawdust on a workbench. There are the obvious ingredients: the paint, ethanol, turpentine, creosote; intoxicating, burning scents that are kept far up the other end of the shed; the dust and wood scrapings permeate the air, thick with memories of their own (dreaming, perhaps, of when they were trees in themselves?); sweat and testosterone, a marking of territory alongside the blushing rememberants of the inevitable farts that coalesce into eddies and pockets.

There are places where accidents occurred, blood spilt like milk -not cried over, but cursed. There, by that patch on the workbench, where the screwdriver slipped whilst opening a can of paint. Not all wounds are masculine and to be boasted about; there are the majority which are mishaps and careless mistakes.

“Never read the instructions if 'common sense' will do.”

The shed as Top Trumps:

Size: 17 x 12 x 11ft

No of Screwdrivers: 52

Largest Saw: 4ft

Electricity: Yes

Extras: Working Lathe

(Commons sense, by the way, is a fallacy. You and I are two completely different people. We couldn't be more dissimilar if we tried, so where does this fabled commonality lie? In the shed, of course!)

An unwritten law between men; better than a confessional booth, for what is spoken about in the shed stays in the shed. Anyone can step into the shed as a visitor, but to be invited in.. nay, invited in to cross the threshold as an equal is an honour and something that is never to be taken for granted. This is to gaze at the innermost cave of a man's soul.

Inside my Uncle's shed; which was one of many, I might add... The shed was alike a Yew tree, able to create a tap root and grow new versions of itself... inside my Uncle's shed were two items that fascinated me. One was a cigarette lighter and the other an ashtray, both of which were made of artillery shells. I never found out who had made them or why.

The shed as fractal: The shed is a whole, but open a cupboard and there are drawers, inside the drawers are tins, inside the tins are packets, and inside the packets are screws, pins, tacks and nuts. Other drawers have sandpaper -whole and virginal, untouched since the factory. Some are folded and barely used whilst others are torn into quarters and scuffed; further more are torn into smaller and smaller pieces, worn and streaked and well used.

A place for everything, and everything has its place – the motto for every shed.

The shed as 'secret' hiding place: “Oh, he goes into his shed to have his sneaky fag, but I know what he's doing!”

Ode to a Shed by Tim Draper

This is where I come to hide,

It might not look like much, I may confide..

..but it's mine.

My Granddad’s third shed was a concession. He gave up an allotment and a whole family of sheds when my Nan made him move to Bognor to be closer to the right side of the family (though I sometimes wonder whether he would've preferred to have left them behind.)

It was small in size -having just enough room to hold a child's bicycle, but it was built like a TARDIS, and he knew where everything was. It drove my Nan crazy and she often swore that he'd arranged things so they fell on her whenever she crossed the threshold. I dare-say he did, but she could never see the genius logic to it. It looked a mess to her.

To be fair, it did to me when I first saw it... but when I got to know Granddad the more I understood the shed's layout. It got to the stage, in the month's before he died, that I knew precisely where everything was stored.

Shed's as archeology: you can date a shed by the tins and bottles that are used to house the nails and screws. Granddad smoked roll-ups so there were an abundance of Golden Virginia tins around. He used to wind Nan up when he said that the chalk for the Shove-halfpenny game was in the Golden Virginia tin. Course, I knew which one it was in, but never told until I received the knowing wink.

Some sheds even have theme tunes. Granddad also had an old beaten up tape-player with the songs of Paul Robeson and Wand'rin' Star (with Lee Marvin handling 'vocals') from Paint Your Wagon on it. It was the only tape he owned and he played it every time he was in the shed. It wasn't just that he loved those songs, but they were the only ones he could sing along to.

My dad had a record player in his shed... one of his sheds anyway. He had four sheds in the end, this one became his den. He had a kettle, a makeshift bookshelf and a recliner, built in the corner, and by the door an old reproduction gramophone.

He had an odd assortment of records: Western movie themes and cowboy songs (a genre of songs that has been lost now to the maudlin's of Country & Western); an Elvis boxed set of ten LP's; several Beatles albums (well played with yellowing sticky tape acting as makeshift field dressings); a couple of Lonnie Donnegan EP's and an oddity that one no longer see's any more -the Cover's album. (These were albums comprised solely by session musicians who covered all the hits of the day “at a fraction of the price”. In all cases the songs really were exceptional and it was almost impossible to tell that they weren't the originals. I suppose that, in this day of the X-Factor and The Voice, the concept has come back into vogue.. but without the musicianship and talent.)

The shed as psycho-analytical tool: There's a rumour that a chemist's dispensaries reflect their attitude to mortality – it all depends on how close the poisons are to the individual. So this is reflected in the layout of the shed. Gramps was very secretive and kept the layout locked away to himself and a chosen few.
Others are far more methodical. Screwdrivers go there (Flat heads to the left, Phillips to the right); hammers over there... This drawer has plastic gloves, face masks and first aid kit....

Other people have no sense to anything. Accident prone and constantly losing things -the shed imitating life.

The sheds of today smell wrong. They smell of the factory; mass produced and no personality. In the land of gender equality it's no longer a safe haven. Tools are massed produced to be labour saving and shiny, with LED lights and it's not long before they come in matching pink.

There is an uprising taking place though. The Auto-jumble and traction engine ralleys... tools; HUGE tools, oily, dirty, drenched in history, masculine tools with a story to tell that captivate those around them; fresh from the hell-forges of Nidavellir; forged for men only.

Woman's place is everywhere and anywhere and it's right that there should be no limit to what they can do and where they can go.

But man MUST have his shed. Inviolate, his womb, his tomb where he can be at rest. HIS

I don't have a shed.

The Electrified Staircase

The empty classroom is cold and sterile; this is no longer a room of knowledge but of re-education. She sits behind her desk alone, waiting; her tight yet formless clothes the same drab grey as the walls. Her features betray no emotion and her hair is cut short; severe, like her manner.

The door opens and a man walks in. He may have been described as an individual once but no longer for he is but a defective cog in the machine. This is not an acronym, simply a fact –to her we are all Cogs in the wheel.

He is sick, she’s seen his type many times and it is her responsibility to maintain the status quo, to enlighten those broken cogs and reprocess them where necessary. Most suffer from the simply aberration of mis-identification; they’ve lost sight of the hive and see themselves as different. Most can be brought back to the awareness and will regain their place in the totality. But there are always a few that refuse to be the same; these are the trouble makers and have to be dealt with accordingly.

He sits deliberately in the third row of the empty classroom, by the window. Clever, she thinks to herself, drawing attention to himself even now, allowing himself access to the outside world.

“Admin RH6 37? I want you at the front of the room where we can converse more freely.” She speaks in an authoritarian tone exactly like a school teacher should, excepting he is at least seven years older than her.

“Oh, I didn’t realise that I was brought here for a chat!” He replies in a tone that would once have been dripping in sarcasm; but of all emotions, sarcasm was the first to go. It was deemed the most unprofessional and the lowest of all the forms of ‘wit’ by those who lacked the understanding that came from true awareness. But then self-awareness, like sarcasm, was bad for the system; it was dangerous and needed to be stamped out –and stamped out it was. Soon humour was drained of any colour until it ceased to be.

After sarcasm was dispensed with things became far more politically correct; everyone was the same. Everyone was equal and there was no need for diversity of any kind. It was one big happy family, except there was no such thing as a family unit any more and no was happy.

“You know why you’ve been brought here, RH6.” She replied as he got up and almost skipped into his new chair.

“So not a cup of tea and a chat then.” He replied, smiling.

“Stop behaving like a child, RH6. You’re not a child any longer and haven’t been for quite some time.” Taking away names was just the first part of the dehumanisation process. Of course it had been a subtle indoctrination; the mass media, advertising and asinine television programmes and films had systematically taught people to think along certain predetermined tracks for years without them realising it. When the programming finally became overt there was virtually no resistance; most people seeing it as a kind of blessing. They didn’t need to think any more and there was no longer any need for ‘escapism’.

“You know.. you could call me Bob.” Bob replied. This was as she expected, he still clung to his birth name….

“I knew you’d be trouble, RH6.” Her arms flat on the table, her body language betraying nothing, her voice modulated and icy. “Despite having been systemised once before you still maintain your right to individuality. You still flaunt yourself as a somebody, albeit in subtle ways. Yes, it took us quite a while before we were able to truly catch you in the acts but now that your sitting in front of me I can see it in your eye.” Bob smiles at the recognition and matches her gaze. “At one time we would have called it a mischievous glint and it might have even been applauded but now it is just another sign of your depravity, so it needs to be eradicated.”

“And so you fear it, don’t you?”

“We fear nothing. Fear is another concept that we don’t recognise.”

“But you do encourage fear in others, don’t you… That, at least, is acceptable.”

“There are some emotional states that are useful to us, that we can engender in others, yes.”

“Hate, fear and anger;” Bob listed, counting them on his fingers. “Once these manifest you’ve then got cause to clamp down on people, eh? Clever.”

“You seem to understand our ways.. Bob. You approve?”

“Approve?” Bob shrugs, looking non-plussed before slamming his hands on to the desk. “Approve! How dare you? You’re no different to all the other despots who have sought to control peoples minds throughout the ages and you’ll fail as they all did!”

“That is where you’re mistaken. Where you see successive failures, we see rehearsals. Where you acknowledge individual despots we see one tapestry. Our files indicate that your subversions stem from the belief that there is one big conspiracy. Originally you were arrested once the Freedom Of Speech act came into play; you were posting comments on Facebook , trying to warn the people of our agenda –as if they cared! No one was listening to you, RH6. No one ever listens!”

“They will one day, when they realise what it is that they’ve lost!”

“What is it exactly that you think they’re losing? Free will? Oh dear –you will need re-educating! From the moment they’re born the majority think exactly what we tell them to think; they’re given countless choices along a very narrow spectrum of thought but consistently kept beneath glass ceilings. We pressure them into learning things that will occupy, confuse and belittle them at school. We educate them enough so they realise their place in society and they know not to question our fundamental truths. We tell them what to believe, we tell them what to feel and how to think. Give a lie enough credence, make it elaborate enough and people will believe it regardless of how ridiculous it is! We’ve had thousands of years to practice that… But then you know that already, don’t you… Bob?”

“Jesus Christ!” He says, hanging his head in frustration.

“Good example! So.. how does it feel to be right?”

“Someone will stop you; will free the people against you!”

“Free the people? What makes you think that the people want to be freed? They know no different. Let me tell you of an experiment…

“It’s about three generations of rats. They lived in a two storey cage and the only way to get to the second storey was by a metal staircase which gave off electric shocks. So the first generation knew not to go up the staircase because of the pain it inflicted on them. Those four rats soon got the message and didn’t venture near that end of the cage, nor upstairs.

“Two were taken out after a week and two new ones were substituted. When the new additions tried to go upstairs they were warned not to by the original two. Warning squeals would deter them even if they dared to walk towards the staircase. Even though a week had elapsed since the shocks had been administered the original two rats had remembered the pain. Another week passed and the last of original two rats were taken out and replaced by another two. Can you guess what happened?”

Bob sighed and felt a tear trickle down his cheek. “When the third generation of rats tried to go upstairs they were warned not to by the second generation, even though the second generation had never been shocked themselves.”

“And by that time the staircase was no longer electrified… and that’s the story of the human race some several thousand generations on.”

“But you will always get people who can see through your lies and seek to tell the truth.”

“Like yourself, RH6? And where did that get you? How many people did you manage to convert with your anarchic posts? Who engaged with you?”

“A few…”

“And those few were the ones who gave us the evidence we needed to bring you in the second time! Don’t look so shocked –oh, they needed persuading… but even the most stalwart of your so-called-friends folded after a while. They saw the futility of your quest especially when they realised how we could hurt them.”

“You hurt them?”

“Not in any real sense, no; and nor would we. They are too useful to the machine. We threatened them with expulsion and public degradation. Like most rebels that have no backbone; they put up the façade of strength but it was paper thin. We scarcely threatened them, truth be told, such was their conviction and belief in you.”

“So what about me?” Bob sighed. “What do you intend to do with me now?”

“Well, you have resisted all attempts to be recycled, RH6. You stubbornly cling to your petty individuality and refuse to submit. Your wish is to be unique and so we reward you with the right to do so!”

“What? How do you mean?” Bob stammered, shocked by the revelation.

“You are far more use to us in your present state… Bob. We will grant you everything you desire. You may keep your name, your true name; act how you like and behave in whatever manner you desire –you will never be arrested or conditioned again. As far as the law is concerned you no longer exist.

“You will only strengthen people’s perception of our regime and you will become the object of their fear and hate. You will, in effect, become their electrified staircase. After so many generations we feel that someone has to be made an example of so the people can be reminded of the truth… and you, Bob, will be their example. You have now everything that you ever wished for –complete freedom, but something tells me that you will no longer be able to enjoy it. But, that’s that – Thank you for your time, Bob –you may go… We will not be seeing you again.”