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Press, 25 June 1983, Page 24

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BOLT YOUR DINNER

There dwelt in the city an inspector who by slow degrees had become of renown, and the Chief spake unto her, saying, Lo, there is in the ’wilderness behind the potters field an artificer who hath made two score and five special bolts. Great is the tensile strength thereof, that they may fix the top of a cylinder casing even unto the bottom. Get thee thence and gauge thou them. Yea, if by the width of a whisker of a gnat or the knee of a bee falleth the bolt short of spec, great would be the wrath of the user of ends. And the Inspector made reply and said, 0 Chief, thou wilt be done. Then departed she and dwelt in the land of the artifice. And the maker of the bolts was seized by irreverence and mocked her, saying, Sister, sister, dost thou want a six inch (152 mm rule? And dost thy mother know thou art out? The inspector chided the artificer in these words, Yea though I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, zip thou thy lip 0 chauvin, 0 deleteface, else the Noxious Nuisance Act, 1908, shall put thee out of business forever, that is my convenant with thee; and the artificer begged forgiveness. The inspector spake and said, Command thy servants to bring unto me all the paper work. And there were carried unto her the test certificates of the raw materials and the MSL certificates of the fiery furnace and the calibration certificates of the hardness machine and a host of other certificates of accuracy for the tensile and Izod machines in which they did stretch and smite. And there were also-

brought to her in error a dog licence, a copy of the Factories Act, and a ticket for the effortless accumulation of wealth in the unions of arts. And there were radiological reports and returns of chemical analyses and a pyrometer chart which was 50 cubits in length. The inspector looked upon all these things and saw that they were good. Then did she measure all the bolts and the dimensions thereof, that they were according to Imperial decree. And put she them in strange potions, and tested she them upon a machine of Magnaflux. And performed she Rockwells upon them, and rubbed she them with a precious jewel. And cast she her eye upon them through a microscope. Then she did cause upon a screen the shadow of the substance in its threads to be cast, and she gazed upon their form and it was fair. And she did gauge the threads of the laws of Go and Nogo, and she did cast X-rays upon them lest there should be weevils. These things and all others which were in the book did she with great cunning. And when all had come to pass, the inspector made out a release note and impressed her seal upon it and said, Lo if these bounce you may eat them without salt. It came to pass that the grief of the artificer in the wilderness behind the potters field was terrible to behold, for it did also come to pass that the bolts did bounce. The artificer had kept faith from generations past with the Imperial decree of shilling foot and groat. The user of ends had come newly to the revelation of metre, kilogram, and second, and the old Imperial decree was dust and less than dust.