Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Cars, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Imagination, New Zealand
I am not a DIY person.
Once, when I was at school, I literally sawed through my finger in a woodwork class and just last week, I stabbed my hand with a serrated knife while trying to cut through some plastic.
With this in mind, it’s fairly obvious that I don’t give a fuck about anything associated with DIY.
Well, I say that, but there have a couple of occasions where I’ve given a damn.
One was the first time I used a drill which – arguably for the first time – made me feel ‘a man’. The downside was I got so into using it, I put so many screws into the fuzzball table I was trying to fix, that the removal men couldn’t take it apart when we kept moving country.
The other was – bizarrely – a ladder, which we bought in the UK.
It was nothing special but like experiencing a smart TV after years of using an old school piece of shit, I thought I had entered a parallel universe given its ability to fold down to a fraction of its size. I know … I know …
But maybe that’s why I was so captivated when I saw this …
Yes, it’s a ladder – a very short ladder – built onto the back of a car.
And while NZ is a rugged land, there is absolutely no requirement whatsoever to ever get on your car roof when you live in Auckland. And yet I love it. It adds a dimension of ‘explorer’ that transcends even the biggest and most modern of SUV’s.
Of course, if that ladder was on its own, you’d think it was the most pointless, shit thing ever. But add it to the back of a car and suddenly you’re Indiana bloody Jones, climbing up on it for any old reason.
Which serves as a reminder that ideas are driven as much by context as need and the more we embrace that, the more we allow imagination to work it’s magic than purely logic.