Another Back-Slapping Event

It happened today, a Saturday.

It started at about eight in the morning when I went in search of a DPDT electrical switch. That’s a double pole double throw switch to the uniformed.

I needed this as the Metop rotary switch that I worked on last week did not function correctly. It reversed the polarity I needed to feed to the motor’s starter winding, but as soon as I switched it on it tripped my Earth Leakage, This confused me but I soon figured out that I was connecting negative to positive at the starter junction, I spent some more time on the fact-finding internet and discovered I needed the DPDT switch specially designed to reverse polarity.

I decided on paying a call on an electrical wholesaler, who I knew stocked most items required when one re-wires a house, I’d visited them on numerous occasions in the past and they were very agreeable to a ten percent discount if you paid in cash.

It was a twenty-minute drive over to Albertskroon and I said hello to the manager, Adam, a very affable Asian chap. I had waited till the weekend as I knew on Friday he would be closed, as he had to attend his Muslim lunchtime rituals, which sometimes extended well into the afternoon with a feast of assorted samosas and kneeling to the east.

“Hi, how’s it Adam.”

“Can’t complain,” he replied, “what can I do for you Cess?”

“I’m looking for a DPDT switch so that I can reverse the polarity to the starter winding of a motor to get it spinning anticlockwise,”

His jaw dropped, conveying that he had not the foggiest idea what I was talking about.

“Sorry, what’s that?”

“It’s a switch with six terminals, two for the positive and neutral inputs, and four others that you cross-bridge, and then you take leads to the motor you wish to run in reverse.”

He still looked none the wiser.

“The guys that know all that stuff don’t work on a Saturday, I’m sorry.”

“You got a computer? Google a DPDT switch.”

“OK,” and he ambled to the far end of the counter replying in about twenty seconds, “Oh I see. Ja, an illuminated rocker switch, off and two ons.”

“That’s what I want, you got?”

“Err…... no. I have seen them in the shop, but not in a while.”

“Oh, well that’s great. Can you help me with ten 4mm ferrels, ten 10mm ferrels, a 2 x4 metal box, and a blank 4 x 4 bank cover plate with the skeleton behind it.”

“Plastic or metal?”

“Whichever is the cheaper.”

“Plastic, only twelve Rand,”

“That’ll do. You can tot it up, thanks.”

“All in all, forty bucks, cash?

“Great, yeah. Do you know where I might get a DPDT?”

“There’s an appliance repair shop near the Checkers just down the road and a Cash-Crusaders, right next door and there’s Mickles. You could try them.”

“Cash-Crusaders, they’re a porn shop, aren’t they?”

“Ja, but you never know.”

Paying my forty Rand and exiting with my plastic bag of goodies I departed, “See ya Adam.”

Another four-minute drive to the Checkers site, where I found Cash-Crusaders, the appliance repairer, but not a sight of Mickles. Even the parking attendants had never heard of it and the Cash-Crusaders didn’t open till nine o’clock. I ventured into the appliance shop to be greeted by a smiling young African lady. We exchanged pleasantries but when I mentioned the DPDT switch she gave the African reply, “Eeeeeeish! The boss will be coming soon”

I departed.

My ageing grey hard drive was perplexed, I rebooted with a slug from Toddie in my bakkie and stretched my memory to a past time I had been in this area, when suddenly another electrical wholesaler sprang into my head. It was on Ontdekkers Road about ten minutes away, I steered the bakkie in what I thought was the right direction.

Wrong.

I ended up in the back streets of Albertskroon but facing me was a very large hardware and building depot which sported the huge sign which announced, “Electrical goods!”

Worth a try I thought, and I sauntered inside to be told that they didn’t have a DPDT switch but I should try Kelec Electrical about two kilometres further down Ontdekkers Road.

“Its number is 360 and Ontdekkers is just around the corner.” Said the over-weight salesman. Feeling elated that my navigational skills were still OK  I climbed into my bakkie and headed off to Kelec.

Ten minutes later, and I was clutching the switch that cost 38 Rand, a bargain!

I drove to my abode dumbfounded that it was only half past nine and set to change into my acting-electrician wardrobe.

For me to now go into the intricacies of my use of the angle grinder, drill, pliers and screw drivers, Phillip’s and straight, ferrels and insulation tape would probably bore you, but I do have to mention how I Magyvered the plastic 4 x4 cover plate so that I could insert my DPDT switch and end up with my completed project.

This required the use of my drill with a three-millimetre bit.

I carefully marked, with a black Cokie pen, the cover-plate with the dimensions of the switch and starting in the centre, I drilled out a rectangular hole. This a tedious job as making a rectangular hole with a round drill bit is like a child trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, almost impossible; however, with the use of a Stanley knife blade the task was completed.

The 4 x 4 box on the left houses the DPDT switch and joint-bar for electrical connections, the wires coming out lead to the starter winding and the running winding of the motor, a brown and blue to each winding, and the recycled double-switch on the right, from my scrap box, is the mains switch for the whole set-up, cutting off both the live and neutral wires, which enter the 2 x 4 box on the far right.

The whole operation, on display below, took approximately four hours and after several test runs of the motor making sure it ran correctly in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions.

I felt the need of a bit of back-slapping and self-administered congratulations.

I refilled my Toddie with some Groot-Marico mampoer I had saved from my trip to that Charles Herman Bosman part of South Africa and had a stupendous, well-deserved back-slapping and thirst quenching time!

Back-Slappping Gleeful Delight

I have discovered that as your age increases, and you enter your senior years, the discovery of how to do something becomes extraordinarily exciting.

In one’s youth the learning that confronted you at school and on through college or university, if you were fortunate enough to climb the educational ladder was a tedious affair.

 You were confronted by either teachers and lecturers you loved or hated. They gave termly tests and exams at the years end which you dreaded, and then gave gleeful sighs of relief when you learnt you had passed and achieved your goal.

In the age of the over-seventies, when ones appendages seem to be breaking down, that gleeful sigh becomes an explosion of back-slapping delight.

I recently experienced such an explosion when I learnt how to wire a three-position rotary switch, that’s one with an off position and two active live positions. Such devices were common in the fifties, sixties and seventies before the arrival of new chip and transistor technology.

They were in your HiFi units, your portable radios, your fridges, household appliances, and your televisions. You used to switch channels, change dishwasher and steam-iron temperatures, regulate toaster times and even set your alarm clock using a basic rotary switch,

So, when a friendly defence-force trained plumber who I have worked with for years, Keith, handed me a Metop three position rotary switch and asked me to wire it so that he could run his grinder in a forward mode, a reverse mode and an idle state, I was filled with a questioning mind, could I or couldn’t I do it?

I started by exploring the internet and discovered numerous circuit diagrams, several U-tube videos and one or two sites offering practical and theoretical advice. I watched the videos, read the documents and perused the diagrams and was none the wiser, until I remembered something I learn in my physics class at school. Electricity is like watert it flows until something stops it and that’s what a switch does!

How do you test the ability of electricity to flow?

You use a continuity tester and I have one.

So, I set to work testing the switch with it set in all three positions. In the off position I discovered that there was no flow on any of the sixteen terminals, eight one side of the barrel and eight on the other;

Position One, there was flow from one left mounted terminal to two terminals on the right. I had discovered an on circuit. Two hours later, on position two, and I had discovered the second on-circuit coming from a different left mounted terminal to two right mounted terminals. Success!

But I was still confused, and something was not right. Yes, it worked, I could feed live power in and out, but where the fuck did the neutral wire go?

I knew this system would work with Keith’s grinder, I could feed the live current through the switch and connect a separate neutral to his grinder, but I also knew that the Metop switch had not revealed all its secrets.

A phone call to another old friend, Herman the German, a trained and fully qualified electrician of over forty years. He asked me to send a photo on the “Whats Application”.

Another new learning experience for me. Having transported the photo through the ether the cell phone rang.

“It’s got Bruken.” Said Herman.

“What? I don’t think it’s broken,” I replied.

“Not broken, it’s got Bruken!” he repeated irritably, across the terminals, on both sides, what was it used on before?”

“I don’t know.” Then my O-level Deutsch resurfaced, “Ah, Bruken, Bridges!”

“Ja, strip ‘em all off, they is confusing you They triangles.”

“Triangles?”

“Ja, them things mit three corners, strip the bridges, and then retest with the continuity tester, you did gut mit dat!”

“I did that, and it works.”

“Ja, but you got no place for neutral, strip bridges and retest. Call me back when you’ve done Dat.”

I duly followed Herman’s instructions and removed all the nine bridges and discovered that I had no continuity at all between the terminals that I had before!!

I felt as if I’d lost the battle, defeat was staring me in the face.

I re-read the numerous pages I’d downloaded from the Net and tried Wikipedia. A triangle sprang into view and it all began to make sense!

Out with the tester and this time I knew what I was looking for, an imaginary triangle with two of its corners touching two separate terminals, one on the left side of the Metop and the other on the right.

Within half an hour I had discovered four circuits and had the Metop switch wired up so that both positive and negative were switched on and off.

I quickly rigged up a light on an old piece of Oregon Pine, supplied power to the Metop switch and onto the light and tested my wiring. It worked!

A gleeful telephone call to Herman-the-German, thanking him, followed.

And now, Keith’s grinder could now go forward or in reverse mode with a flick of the rotary switch.

An explosion of back-slapping delight engulfed my aged old frame!

Equal and Opposite

Recently whilst enjoying a relaxed state of inebriation with a fellow Thespian I began to formulate a theory related to our profession. 

We were half way through a game of Scrabble and the fact that my “Toddie” was empty and the flagon of dry red my friend had brought with him was almost finished, may have been the reason we were having to consult the dictionary with increasing rapidity.

“Actinism” was the word in question. My friend, Iain Walter Mcpherson another jobbing actor going through lean times, was eager to use his “Z” on a triple letter score. I had no idea what the word meant never mind how to spell it.

I was pleased to discover from my Penguin Concise that it was spelt with an “S” not a “Z” and enlightened to learn that it is the intrinsic property in solar and nuclear radiation that produces photochemical activity.

I was amazed at my friend’s in-depth knowledge of the world of physics and enquired as to when and where he had come across the word.

“Ach,” his Scot’s lips mumbled, “I was playing Rabbit at the time in an adaptation of AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.”

“So,” I acerbically retorted, “You gave your character an Einsteinian-like bent?”

“No,” he replied seriously.

Not catching my creative drift he rambled on, “It was roond abute the late eighties and I had to wear some buck teeth over mi own front teeth and during a matinee performance I lost them.”

By now Iain was beginning to lose me too, as my alcohol-bemused mind could find no connection between the loss of Rabbit’s buck teeth, nuclear physics and solar radiation.

My eyes glanced down the page of the dictionary and I came across the very short definition given for an “actor.” A performer in a play for stage, film or television.

My God, I thought. What cheek!

It’s about time the world was given an explanation of what I and thousands of other jobbing actors are, what it is we do and why we do it.

I must formulate an Einsteinian-like theory.

Iain mumbled on as the last dregs of red wine in his enamel mug sat precariously balanced on his knee. He was completely oblivious to the fact that I had crossed into another dimension and was in a world of my own. We were suddenly two reminiscing monologues performing simultaneously in the same time and space.

My monologue took me back to my early days of training at the Royal Academy. A brilliant improvisation teacher, Mr. Keith Johnston, told us we were actors. “Whatcha mean by that?” piped up an ingratiating American student.

“An actor is someone who uses every part of himself, not just his voice, like a singer. Not just his arms and legs like a dancer. Not just his hands and eyes like a painter or sculptor. He uses his whole-being, he has to feed on every physical and mental attribute that his body can muster.”

Deep words for a bunch of young aspiring thespians to grasp.

We all stood dumbfounded in his class and waited for his next words of wisdom.

“Right,” he said, “I want you to blow up these balloons, and you can start by using your lungs.”

As I was blowing up mine I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he too was inflating a balloon, but before he started he took a syringe filled with some liquid out of his briefcase and injected it into the balloon. “Now we are going to take a trip inside one of the vilest monsters you can possibly imagine and one of you is going to slay it,” he said, holding his limply inflated balloon in his hand.

A ballsy female student, Annastasia Vampkov, from Bulgaria volunteered to make the trip.

Had Ms. Vampkov been born in the eighties she would have been excellent in the role of Lara Doon in the 1999 film of The Tomb Raider. This very attractive sultry looking red head was blindfolded and two male students leapt at the offer to be her guides on the trip.

The rest of us, apart from myself who was given the role of storyteller, were to be the insides of the monster. Following my draconian narration finger and toe-nails became teeth, sweaty bodies
became the tongue, hot garlic smelling breath of two Italian students became the breath of the monster, the inflated balloons, arms, legs, fingers, and torsos became the walls of the stomach and intestines.

The teacher whispered an instruction in my ear. “Now, you’re reaching the vital life- sustaining organ of the monster,” I said quickly modifying my narration to fall in line with Keith’s instruction, “if you reach out you’ll be able to feel it.”

The wet liquid-filled partially inflated balloon held tightly stretched between Mr. Johnson’s hands was placed in easy reach of the terrified Ms Vampkov. “Grasp it with both hands and rip it out”, I intoned in her ear.

She did just that. As the balloon burst covering the unsuspecting lass with water she screamed loudly and suddenly vomited. A perfectly natural reaction I thought for a Bulgarian vampire slayer.

It was at this stage in the formulation of my theory that Iain suddenly burst into an hysterical fit of laughter.

“Ye know were they were? I’d spat them rite out! They were sitting on top of this old grandma’s head in the front row of the audience!” he guffawed as he licked the remaining droplets of red wine he’d spilt off his knee.

 It just goes to show that all actors, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are right. At any time, in any space, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.