Ahh good point. My grandmother had a porch that was fully surrounded by floor to ceiling glass windows into the hallway - a 60's/70's modernist style house.

It was trouble free until a winters morning in the 1980's when the postman slipped on ice and went headfirst through one of the window panes, and hand first through the pane next to that one. I think at least one artery was involved, but he was very understanding when released from hospital - everyone loved my grandparents.

By then safety had asserted itself over design principles, and the entire thing was paneled to waist height. Obviously a new carpet had to go down too.

I recall being upset. I loved the open effect of all that glass looking onto the formal front garden, the lawn of which was always mowed in stripes to please me.

Changing the kitchen cabinet door handles. All going easy with a screwdriver until the second last drawer. I need pliers to hold the still attached fixed part in place, due to how the rest of the handle just broke off. The screwdriver is just going round and round with no resistance to work against now. I don't have pliers, or the temperament. It was all going so well. Too well.

I wonder of my sons school has a vice. They must have tools in their craft and design tech room. I'll text him, without saying anything about him taking a kitchen cupboard drawer to school. If so, he can take it in for me.

'Why?'. Well that's not an answer.

I'm sending back 'Just wondered - was watching something on television and wondered if you'd ever used one, I have'.

Ah. He says if it's what he thinks it is, there is one and he's used it. Good. He'll be taking a kitchen drawer to school.

Do you have a claw hammer?

I do.

Would it not be easier just to send CT's son out to buy some pliers.

Fangirl Three wrote:

Would it not be easier just to send CT's son out to buy some pliers.

Yes, that would be far more logical. It never occured to me.

I'm not sure I want a pair of single use pliers hanging around.

Pliers aren't single-use.

You can use them many many many times.

And they're relatively small (somewhere between the size of a washing machine and a speck of dust), so they can be easily stored out of sight.

Pliers are pretty useful. I have a mini-multitool incorporating plier functionality, and it's saved my bacon several times in hotel rooms. Like when the plug wouldn't come out of the bath once.

Well I've had to buy a pair from Amazon, due to his point blank refusal to cooperate. Doing a favour for his mother would've been embarrassing, apparently - and that's the polite version.

Well I certainly won’t be listening to Nightjar and Fangirl in the future. Easier to just buy your own. I’ve been waiting in all afternoon, and they did deliver - only they got the buzzer wrong so they went away again, having also rung me from outside on the phone for not long enough for me to answer, and now I’ve had to cancel a dinner reservation so they can return, which I’m promised will be any time until 10pm. Even this was only achieved after an odyssey through the different departments until someone took some kind of responsibility. Meanwhile, the contents of the drawer and the drawer itself remain all over the worktop surface. Just buy your own indeed.

Hmm, I was actually thinking earlier on (I actually think it was my first conscious thought thought after wa*king waking).

- Are there any hardware shops near South Kensington?

There would've been a Wilcos on HSK, but, y'know...

Young M would probably have to go to that big shop at NHG under the block of flats where Shelley Winters lived in Alfie and what used to be a Wimpy.

And, when I was very little, a short-lived shoppe called Serendipity that sold everything and nothing.

Don't buy pliers online is what I have been basically try to say.

I've got several pairs.

I could've Ubered them over.

Oh, and also...

I support the Nightjar platform in this regard.

Nightjar wrote:

Hmm, I was actually thinking earlier on (I actually think it was my first conscious thought thought after wa*king waking).

- Are there any hardware shops near South Kensington?

There would've been a Wilcos on HSK, but, y'know...

Young M would probably have to go to that big shop at NHG under the block of flats where Shelley Winters lived in Alfie and what used to be a Wimpy.

And, when I was very little, a short-lived shoppe called Serendipity that sold everything and nothing.

It’s arrived. The drawer is now fixed. The pliers are tidied away in it.

I think there’s a hardware shop in Earls Court. On Kenway Road?

He finally arrived just as my favourite sex scene with Michele Morrone from 365 Days had started to play on whatever dodgy Russian website I’d distractedly opened.

I've just painted my airing cupboard door frame. It was navy blue. Now it's brilliant white. It was gloss. Now it's matt.