HANDS: 

hands

hands title: 

§29. Old tools

hands date: 

4 April 2026

hands text: 
One day, I'd like to write a book,
a book all about time.
About how it does not exist.
How the past and the future
are one continuous present.
I think that all people
— those who are living, those who have lived,
and those who are yet to live —
are all alive now.
I would like to empty the subject of time to the very bottom,
like a soldier scraping the last of thin soup from his bowl.
Yevgeny Vinokurov
01
When I bought my first saw file many years ago, the old ironmonger behind the counter asked what sort of saw I intended to sharpen. He disappeared into the back room and returned with three different files.

I suspect he is long dead now. The shop itself became an estate agent and finding a new saw file, or a saw set, is becoming increasingly difficult.

I still keep saw files and a saw set so that I can sharpen and set a hand saw myself. By modern standards, this is hardly rational. Hand saws are inexpensive and readily available. Most people I know simply replace them when they become dull.

02
Sometimes I come across old tool chests at car boot sales or salvage yards. The owner is gone, but traces of his habits remain. The frequently used chisels are worn more than the others. A broken handle has been repaired rather than replaced. A marking knife has been sharpened so many times that its blade is half the size it once was.

None of these things explain themselves.

A man I once knew kept the same trowel for nearly forty years. The wooden handle had become polished where his fingers rested. He never spoke about it and I never thought to ask why he kept it. At the time, it seemed entirely ordinary.

Perhaps that is how traditions survive. Not through speeches or books, but through things that appear too ordinary to deserve explanation.

03
There is an old photograph of my granddad. He is standing beside a machine nobody uses anymore, wearing clothes that disappeared from fashion long ago. I do not even know what the machine does.

Yet something remains strangely present. The expression on his face. The way he stands. The seriousness with which he approaches his work.

04
Perhaps this is why I find old tools so difficult to discard. Not because they remind me of the past, but because they remind me that I belong to something I did not create.
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