{"id":132,"date":"2012-07-10T22:16:46","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T21:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/?p=132"},"modified":"2012-07-10T22:16:46","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T21:16:46","slug":"worse-than-useless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/2012\/07\/10\/worse-than-useless\/","title":{"rendered":"worse. than. useless."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have a saw.\u00a0\u00a0My hand fits nicely into its\u00a0lovely wooden grip from where the metal blade shines, 25cm long, rectangular and\u00a0straight-bladed down to the wicked looking serrated edge.\u00a0But it is worse than useless.\u00a0\u00a0It is in my toolbox giving me the illusion that it can cut wood, giving me the illusion of power over incorrectly shaped planks. \u00a0Useless is a neutral word, a word that places usefulness in front of me and simply removes it leaving me without the use of the object. \u00a0Use-Less. \u00a0But this saw is evil, beyond mere negativity.<\/p>\n<p>Last week we had cleared the weeds off the lowest of the four terraced plots on the allotment that we share with some friends, and this week we took along long planks, a lump hammer, the saw, wooden and metal stakes. \u00a0We were going to edge the terraced bed and I was ready, I had even remembered my leather gloves. \u00a0My friend&#8217;s plank needed to be sawed to fit and he said \u201cI should have brought a saw\u201d and I waggled my implement, gleefully. \u00a0We drew a guide-line, I stood on the back to stabilise and he commenced sawing. \u00a0To discover that the saw was blunt.<\/p>\n<p>As we proceeded the blade heated up and bent, it squeaked in protest and much later, after 10 minutes and 3cm I took a turn, I could not move the blade in the slot that he had carved, I absolutely could not. \u00a0He took over for a while. \u00a0There was still 15 cm to go when he put the job down, drove to his house and fetched one of those plastic handed saws that some people make music on and within minutes the job was done.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a saw.\u00a0\u00a0My hand fits nicely into its\u00a0lovely wooden grip from where the metal blade shines, 25cm long, rectangular and\u00a0straight-bladed down to the wicked looking serrated edge.\u00a0But it is worse than useless.\u00a0\u00a0It is in my toolbox giving me the illusion that it can cut wood, giving me the illusion of power over incorrectly shaped &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/2012\/07\/10\/worse-than-useless\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">worse. than. useless.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1089,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/lucillevalentine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}