I collect the humble clothes peg and this blog is a method of sharing my stories with others who may be interested ..... if not in pegs, then in the stories of my pursuit of pegs. Please feel free to comment on any entry.
Tuesday, 26 December 2006
What is this?
Just when you think you can't be surprised, up comes another peg from a most unexpected direction. The green pegs at the top of this picture were a Christmas present and they are called "Wizzpegs" As you can see, it is cleverly designed to be lockable as well as moulded in one piece and the packet tells me it is for holding socks together to prevent the one sock syndrome we all seem to suffer from. The design is a clever one, but the lock is quite difficult to open and would probably be too fiddly for most people.
One-piece mouldings are a challenge in the peg industry as the process negates any subsequent assembly operation or extra parts, such as springs that rust. You get a one step product with reduced costs. "Of course", I hear you say, "those push-on dolly peg things are moulded in one piece so what is so special about these?" Well, my friends, these pegs have a spring which the dolly pegs lack. Check out some of the other examples in the photo to see how different manufacturers have come up with very clever solutions to the spring problem. Have you seen any others?
Friday, 22 December 2006
Christmas Cheer on the Back Fence
Well the Bougainvillea growing over our back fence is out in force as if to celebrate the coming of Christmas and so I thought I would send you a photo to cheer up this site and give a little bit of light relief from the subject of pegs.
The flowering shrubs and trees are especially good at the moment and we wonder if it is something to do with the drought. Maybe the trees are so lacking in water that they are producing flowers like crazy so that enough seeds are created to ensure the continuation of the species. You should see the Jacaranda's, they are an absolute dream just now with their bunches of beautiful blue (that's B to the third) flowers ... our garden not big enough for Jacaranda though.
Thursday, 21 December 2006
15 Minutes of Fame
We lunched at Camden Lock and after 2nds of DB's delicious Damson Vodka Crumble, all eleven of us reversed the journey, filming all the way, which is not easy when you are under the influence. When the filming was finished we all sat around drinking Damson Vodka... for some reason the TV crew seemed reluctant to leave ...... probably being paid overtime for socialising. This entire day was reduced to four minutes on the telly. ....... but a very good four minutes of course and that means only 11 more minutes of fame to go.
Here in Australia they do things slightly differently. The ABC were here two days ago to film me for the Australian TV program "Collectors". The producer flew over from Tasmania and she with just a sound guy and a cameraman spent the day in the flat. If you go to the ABC collectors site, www.abc.net.au/tv/collectors, you will be able to see other people who are just as obsessed as I am with collecting and if you look at some of the 'collector cams' I promise you will be truly amazed at some of the things that other folk accumulate in wild proportions. But back to the filming .... the crew were excellent and had a great sense of humour which helped me to relax. This time DB didn't have to provide much more than coffee so she disappeared into the bedroom with her Bill Bryson book (BBB) and I had a brilliant day being a superstar. They took my collection seriously - which many wouldn't - and DB said later that the best moment was when I candidly said "I'm not interested in pegs at all". At the end of the day the producer took a heap of pegs from my racks in the hall and spread them out on the table to do an "animation" .... I am really looking forward to seeing that in real life (so to speak). The days filming will be reduced to about 3 minutes, so that leaves only another 8 to go.
Some of this 8 minutes may be taken up with a studio appearance in Hobart .... DB crossing her fingers as she has never been to Tasmania before .... but they have yet to make a decision on that ......... ... maybe if they had tasted DB's Damson Vodka Crumble .............
p.s. I've just looked it up and AW actually said "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes", so I don't have to have it all in one go!!
Monday, 18 December 2006
Christmas in Pegland
Its coming up to Christmas and so my DB has put up the tree ... complete with hand made peg decorations. Its quite surprising what she can do with a dolly peg and a couple of pipe cleaners.
I make no apologies for the colour of this posting, it is Christmas after all, and no apologies for the decorations as I have already made it clear that I am a peglomaniac. My DB understands this and panders to my every whim. (That last bit was a lie but don't tell her I said so!)
Camden Lock and the Gypsy Peg
Thursday, 14 December 2006
Japan and its treasures
This is just one side of one of the displays of pegs. You can see by my smile that I am a very happy man. There were so many pegs I had to buy a new rucksac to carry them all.
I thought that once we had 'done' Tokyo Hands, that all other branches of that shop would have the same displays ..... but NO!! Different towns and TOTALLY different pegs. One peg, a giant one for holding futons over bamboo poles to air, even had HANDS !!!!
Travelling for pegs
I know this is just about pegs, but I have to tell you this ..... when we picked up a taxi at the airport to go to our hotel the driver was amused when we told him our destination. We nervously asked what the problem was and he said we would see many red lights and short skirts. Oh my goodness, just what has DB done. She books our hotels via the internet and this time she had booked us into a brothel. When we got there we found that all of the guests were booked in for two or three hours. I know that in the past I have stayed at hotels that I called brothels but I have never truly stayed at a real one till now. Still, it was clean the staff were polite and it was cheap. The concierge is also a collector so he understood my compulsion to buy pegs. He collects model airplanes. We were only there for a couple of nights, and the best place in Singapore for pegs is Chinatown where I bought 20 new pegs before setting off for the airport for our onward trip to Mumbai.
We had e-mailed our friendly taxi driver (Ronnie) in Bombay that our flight plans had been changed and we were sorry but we would now be arriving at 2 in the morning. Back came the reply from his wife "Ronnie likes you -- you are never a problem". We tried to get some sleep and then off to the mayhem of Crawford market next day. I explained that we wanted pegs to our Indian guide and I showed him the one's I already had. He said he would take us to the wholesaler -- smart guy eh!. Well we went up a dingy alley -- the smell was unbearable, past another alley with rats running everywhere and up some dark stone steps -- I was convinced we were going to be murdered. There, at the end of a deep dark hallway, was a peg collectors dream -- they were stacked floor to ceiling -- I found 32 new ones.