On the merit two-dimensionalality

If you left your tennis racquet out in the rain, without its press, you learnt that being three-dimensional is not always a blessing.

My last tennis racquet was made of ultra-light metal, and strung with plastic, nylon, I think, so you could keep it in the bath, and it'd still work. It didn't even have a cover.

Two books that I prized greatly as a child were volumes I & II of 'How things work'. I think they were a present. I'd have thought they might have been from my mechanically minded uncle, but I think they were more probably from my parents, or brother. Probably my brother.

My uncle once gave me a set of chest-expanders for Christmas. I had no idea that anybody would use such things voluntarily, and still don't understand people who do. I was so disgusted that I didn't, fortunately, probably, even think about how the springs could have been adapted into a trebuchet.

'How things work' were wonderful books. Volume I rather better than Volume II, which seemed something of an afterthought, but they didn't explore the medical, surgical or veterinary worlds much, so there wasn't anything about the making of tennis racquets and what went on at the cat-gut factory. I looked, specially, so I know this, and still don't know if they use(d?) machines or people who were very good with scissors.

Wikipedia tells me they use sheep or goats, rather than cats, something that'd have been hard to find out then. This aside in wikipedia has me wondering 'Lean animals yield the toughest gut', so, if you're going to use somebody's guts for garters, make sure he's not too skinny.

Technological improvement is a wondrous thing, but, somehow, it seems sad that boys of today don't have a chance to think of the relative merits of the four-screw press over the fast-release lever press for racquets, or to wonder what happens at the cat-gut factory.