This home of unknowns

May 4, 2025, 12:22 pm , by Richard Lutz

RICHARD LUTZ is mystified

It’s not so much looking fruitlessly for things lost in my home as running across things I don’t recognise; I seem to exist in a home of unknown things.

Open a cupboard, a closet, a door and I’m confronted with instruments, apparati, devices, tools, that I don’t know anything about. For instance, what is this white implement, uncovered in the back of a kitchen drawer:

Or this, aptly described by one expert as a mini flange unit (the silver thing, not the hand):

Or this little sucker, unknown, tucked away for years if not decades (its sell-by date is in Latin) but definitely to be used with a 6cm wide grater.

And how about these cuties, these little fluffy balls of Something or Other:

That’s the kitchen. Now to that Great Undiscovered Land…aka my toolbox.

It’s a big re-enforced hunk of molded plastic. It’s called ‘Rough-House’ which appeals to me. And it sits comfortably below a cardboard box of potatoes and, above that, my prime collection of booze curated from the cheapest cut-rate supermarkets ever created by the gods of goods:

Rough-House is bound to cause mayhem, damage and personal injury by its contents that resemble rusted weaponry. Such as this, very useful I would think for a session of medieval eye-gouging:

Or this, obviously a public order rubber truncheon with necessary hand protector:

And what’s this yellow sucker thing (never mind how it got there) and its pal, that hard plastic hook with a strange hollow hole at the short end?

And, of course, who could call a toolbox a genuine Rough-House without a bespoke pair of pinking shears for those who like to, I guess, cut up pink things:

I could go on, into the laundry cupboard with its vast array of liquids, unguents, sprays and powders that have big skull and crossbones tattooed all over the labels advising me to keep away or else I won’t be around to celebrate my next birthday.

Or the garden shed which is rampacked with dangerous bigger tools (some with electrical cords or even small motors) that always seem to be rusted tight or successfully broken so as to halt any theoretical handiwork that is destined to fail anyway.

And don’t even think of my post modern car. Its unfathomable computer system throws up more questions than answers. Inside its glove box is a single forlorn Bandaid for a sore thumb or hangnail, a necessity when my car’s software suddenly rebels and veers into a ditch at 3am on a rainy Tuesday night.

And speaking of cars and tools, a footnote..

Volkswagen got in touch for a needed software re-boot. When I went to pick up the recalled Passat the next day, I was greeted with a slightly nervous smile. They couldn’t do the job. They couldn’t find the tool to carry out the job. It doesn’t exist. Maybe I have something in the bowels of my toughened plastic Rough-House. I’ll check and get back to them.