Doughhooks and passwords

Doughhooks should have a space in the middle, where the dough gets kneaded; but I like to close up the space just to confuse French-speakers and get their tongues tied trying to figure out how it’s pronounced. Passwords can be the same, and both are the subject of today’s missive.

I have a new lodger, who moved in last Monday, and today I told him, after he’d moved his entire workshop of tools and bits and bobs into vertical towers of order and propriety in the basement that would have put a glass-fronted skyscraper to shame for its disorderliness, and a week of mending all my decrepit old appliances and moving a few things around the kitchen, in which he has promised to induct me into induction and gas me with his kito cuisine, casually dismissing orange juice as 50% sucrose and 50% glucose and me shouting after him “So how much percentage is the orangey bit, then, smart-arse?”, I said to him, “I think you and I need to get together and replan this entire house,” at which he smirked and said, “So, how many days did that take – four?” and suddenly I started to see him as a latter-day David Koresh and wondered whether that was entirely right and proper.

Well, it is right and proper when someone comes with suggestions for doing things right and proper and some hard facts, and persuades you that the way you’ve been doing something, not by telling you how to do it better but by actually doing it better, can give you pause for a rethink, though I did have to tell him that the Kenwood mixer, besides being stored, also has to be able to raise up to get the bowl and doughhook in, a point he readily conceded.

There are Elmer Gantrys in this world, who see-eth the light and pursue well-meaning but false gods; and there are false prophets who foretell of riches and abundance and deliver famine and paucity. And there are people who tell not of anything but just get on and do it and teach by example to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. And there are those who ask questions to seemingly irresoluble problems and never find answers but find themselves in the questions. There are all sorts, and there is therefore harmony. Except the false prophets bit, of course.

Someone hacked my LinkedIn so, if you’re seeing polite anodyne posts that offend no one and prick no one’s conscience, then that’s not me, I can assure you. However, I was a bit too quick signing in to The Endless Chain, and the advice given by the portal’s owner was “use a longer password”. Use a what? How about “Use the right password, you dolt”? Or is a password like “Bernie the Bolt” on The Golden Shot - left a bit, right a bit, up a bit, FIRE!? Could just be, on LinkedIn at least.