A little background is needed to this posting. There had
been some correspondence on the newsgroup uk.rec.waterways about various ways
of fitting flexible drives in narrowboats. The subject of this thread was
"Flexible Driveline", which I persistently miss-read, hence what follows.
As the pantentee of Snevets' Patent Flexible Driveline, I
feel something is missing from this thread.
Once upon a time people were content to receive their drivel
ready-made. Much of it came from Members of Parliament and certain members of
the clergy (the more certain the clergyman, the better the quality of drivel).
But then people felt the need to make their own drivel. This
is not as easy as it sounds, as getting the right proportions of humbug to hot
air is of itself quite tricky, even before one adds the soft soap and the hard
sell.
So I developed a range of substances that could be used to
produce one's personalised drivel by cutting and pasting sheets of the product.
My first attempt, Drivelose, was not a success because it
had too short a shelf-life. The difficulty was that the sheets of Drivelose
soon went rigid and brittle as the hot air component evaporated, thus making
them difficult to work. I realised that this was the result of a reaction
between the humbug and the hard sell in the mixture.
I tried emulsifying these ingredients in castor oil before
introducing the soft soap and hot air, and re-launched the product as
Driveloleum. This suffered the reverse problem of being too deliquescent and
never "going off" adequately.
My final success was to realise that the humbugs needed to
be fully masticated first, and then stirred, with all the other ingredients
except the hot air, into a bucket of bullsh*t. The result was a substance that,
when spread out and dried, retained a softness and flexibility that enabled it
to be cut, fit and pasted into whatever form the customer wanted. Only at that
stage should the hot air be applied, thus cooking the soft substance into the
impenetrable hardness of true drivel. This was the product which I marketed
with considerable success as "Snevets' Flexible Driveline".
Sadly my trade has fallen in recent years, due to the
success of a rival product from the USA, "Dubyaspeak" which, I have to admit,
produces a more consistent quality of drivel.
Ekim Snevets.
Originally written
as a posting to uk.rec.waterways, 31 March 2002. |
