This weekend the news came of Barry Chuckle's passing. Like many who grew up in the UK during the '90s, The Chuckle Brothers were a big part of my childhood, with Chucklevision on most days. I also went to see them at least one at the theater. Whenever carrying stuff, I still find it hard not to say the word "to me" or "to you", though now I work more internationally, this take a lot more explaination. For those unfamilar with the Chuckles' work, I've put a couple of videos at the bottom.
And it's "carrying stuff" that's the subject of this weeks post, something of a tribute to half of Rotherham's finest double act.
Over the years I've needed to transport many things, and wouldn't let the lack of a car/van/truck stop me. In fact, the second ever post in this blog, back in 2011, was about a
pannier I built to get my stuff to/from uni. But many times, even a pannier was to extravagant, and so I resorted to brute force and calling in favours from friends. Much of this was so long ago that I don't have photos - the stories predate camera phones in at least one case, so it's safe to assume I wasn't carrying a camera.
The Limo
A year after we left primary school, the class had a reunion. Tom and I (or "TaT" as we referred to ourselves) wanted to arrive in style, so we decided to come in a limo. Or course a real limo would have cost money, so we built one. By "built one" I mean we mailed four planks of wood into a shape that approximated a car, sprayed in black, and carried it a quarter of a mile to the school.
It turns out, at the age of 12, the wood was a significant burden. We thought it would be worth it, expecting a gret commotion when we arrived. Instead we were met with confusion and ambivilence (
story of my life mate...), and had to carry the thing home again at the end.
The Whiteboard
Several years later I was volunteering at the primary school to "help with IT", as part of my secondary school's community service program. This mostly consisted of shredding paper, in practice. As I was leaving one day I saw a whiteboard was being thrown out - a proper 8x4 foot affair, with gridlines and everything. Knowing I had a
secret workshop project coming up, I felt a whiteboard would make drawing out designs easier, so I called dibs on it, the promise being that I'd pick it up that evening.
The long-suffering Tom gets a call: "do you want to go for a walk mate". "sure". When he arrived I suggested we walk past the school, as I needed to pick up a whiteboard. Unaware of the scale of the task at hand, we walked to the school, and picked up the whiteboard.
About a quarter of the way home, we started to realise that carrying this this wasn't as easy as it apeared. About halfway we tried a new turtle-inspired tactic, with limited success. After what seemed like an hour, we'd made the journey, and I had a massive whiteboard. The effort turned out to unwarranted, as I only used about a third of the board - it was longer than the space I had for it!
The Timber
At the end of my gap year I built
a Hammockent. This required quite a lot of wood (80 feet) to build so, once again, I called Tom. "Fancy a walk - I need to pick up some wood from Wickes, so lets got a little outside our normal routes". What a stich-up...
After picking up the wood, we discussed whether we could borrow a trolley from the store. I had moral issues with this, so we elected to carry the wood on our shoulders. The journey was about a mile and a half, and included a fairly significant hill. As with the whiteboard, by a third of the way in we we're having regrets, discussing whether to put the timber down and go back for a trolley. But, both being stubborn, we kept on. As we aproached the crest of the hill, a man walked past the other way, and helpfully suggested we should have borrowed a trolley...
The Others
There have been many other times I've taken stuff from one place to another in unusual ways, without carrying, per se. Maybe one day I'll elaborate on these., but for now, a quick run down:
- Rolling a four foot flightcase 0.6 miles along a potholed road, with a café table on top
- "Borrowing" a tree branch from a copse, driving it in the boot of a car down a road, and smuggling it into a church at night with Frank
- I built a bass amp with sack cart wheels specifically so it could be wheeled around by hand without need for a car
- In the picture above (last seen in 2013) I built a trolley to transport two 8' 2x3s, which I then pulled 2.6 miles
- Pretty much anything I ever had to get onto the boat
At 3:30 there is a classic "carrying a plank" sketch, a staple of Chucklevision.
At 1:40 the two go into an interview as "Paul Watt" and "Barry Hoo", the names causing much confusion for Mr No Slacking.
RIP Barry - carrying stuff won't be the same without you.
