So I had David Hockney come and make a picture of my shop. Not visible in the picture, which shows three of the four walls, is a wall covered with metal shelves, very cluttered, use your imagination.

We will explain everything, going from right to left. At the right is a radiator and some plastic bins of various size for screws and other little odds and ends. Out of the frame is a big coil of hose and a shiny stainless-steel pump for when it floods, which I use primarily to pump out the wading pool when it gets nasty. In the corner is the door. It is currently warped a little from all the humidity, so you really have to slam it good to get it to close, and yank it to open it.

All those big white tiles on the floor? I laid those myself, with a friend.

That work table I made out of scrap lumber. It was supposed to be a temporary solution – I thought when I had it, I’d be able to use it to make an even better table. I’ve had it about 9 years now. Eventually I’ll just buy a better table. It’s nice and sturdy, though. Under the table are various bags of potting soil, and a watering can, a bucket and rubber boots. On table: coping saw, I believe it’s called, with which I’ve cut a lot of moulding, and some leftover asphalt shingle things I’m saving in case I ever build the kids a play house or something. They’re left over from when we got the roof over the entryway. The guy who sold them to us told me it would be easy for me to put them on the roof since they’re from America and I’m American. He turned out to be right.

On that wall are more plastic bins, the Rumanian faux pegboard tool rack I was talking about earlier and an electric screwdriver and recharging station all from when I went crazy with the drill last weekend. I appear to own a lot of similar saws. In fact they all are slightly different, for different jobs; but the real reason I have so many I guess is my shop used to be so cluttered I’d lose them and instead of taking the time to find them again would usually give up and buy a new one.

At the top left of the pegboard rack you can see what appear to be two claw hammers. They are in fact Austrian carpenter’s hammers, which have one long claw that ends in a point, and one short cut-off claw. You can still pull nails with them, but the long pointy claw gives them a meaner look without having any real function I can figure out; I guess you could use it to tear away at wood or something. I’ve never figured it out. I missed claw hammers, though, until I discovered these. For the longest time I just had sledge-type hammers of various size, and ball peen hammers. I have two of these, for the same reason I have so many saws and screwdrivers.

Over in the corner is a bunch of junk, including a broom and a shelf and a Black and Decker Workmate folding work table that comes in handy sometimes. On the wall are my Pamela Anderson pictures, because every workshop needs some kind of cheesecake pictures, offensive calenders or something. Years ago I traded an old 286 PC for these pictures – I wasn’t using the PC anymore and a son of an acquaintance wanted it, so I gave it to him. When he asked what he could give in return, I didn’t want to say “nothing” so I told him I’d take the Pamela Anderson pictures, which are centerfolds from some teen magazine I guess. I assume they had served as a “Wichsvorlage” for him, “Vorlage” meaning “template” among other things in German, “Wichs” coming from the verb “Wichsen” meaning “to polish” although it has another slang meaning.

Next to Pamela is a drawing Beta did when she was little.

Welcome to my shop.