Funny how the mind works, isn’t it? Shana had only to say the word ‘puzzled’ in conversation yesterday and my brain was away on tangents entirely of its own devising.
From ‘puzzled’ in just under a nanosecond I’d arrived at ‘enigmatic’. Natural enough, I guess. Wouldn’t raise too many questions in your average session of free association on Freud’s couch — except that what popped into my head straight after that was ‘enigmatic drill’.
Enigmatic drill?
Seems I’d invented a totally new machine.
Or had I?
What I suppose I’d meant to think about was pneumatic drill. Those old rattlers have been around for years, though; nothing pneu about them any more, is there? But could this be a simple case of confusion, of thinking about one thing when I meant another. Or was there more to it? Let’s see:
I have a theory about pneumatic drills. I reckon they’re really anti-gravity devices. Think about it. Picture the burly workman outside his red-and-white striped tent at five minutes to midday. It’s not quite lunch break — not officially anyway — but there’s no time to dig up any more of the king’s highway. So what’s he to do? Easy. He’ll just lean on his drill for five minutes. And the drill is the only thing that stops him from falling over. Ergo¹, it must be an anti-gravity device.
Gee, I could win the Nobel prize for nonsense at this rate!
But this doesn’t answer the question, does it? What the heck is an ‘enigmatic drill’ anyway? (Or as they might ask in some parts of deepest Lincolnshire, ‘what the hell’s an enigmatic drill when it’s at home²?’)
I think I’ve figured it out. It’s a drill owned by a reluctant home handyman. Being reluctant, he’s not likely to buy it himself, is he? No, he usually acquires his enigmatic drill as a present from either a spouse or partner who is hoping, by their show of generosity, to shock or encourage him out of his shyness about shelving or his resistance to Rawlplugs. When he gets the drill, he can see quite clearly what it is, but is often heard to say something along the lines of ‘What’s this supposed to be for?’ — hence the ‘enigma’ epithet. The principle can easily be applied to other power tools, so, for example, we could have the enigmatic angle grinder, or (if the bloke in question is a reluctant gardener) the enigmatic rotavator³.
Men frequently seem puzzled by other items of heavy plant such as steam irons or vacuum cleaners. However, neither of these things is, strictly speaking, ‘enigmatic’; in these cases, the man’s puzzlement is, alas, genuine.
References:
¹ Tip to budding writers: always include some Latin. It sounds more scientific — even if you don’t know what you’re on about.
² Is this expression peculiar to Lincolnshire or does it occur anywhere else?
³ The enigmatic home-brew kit, however, does not exist.