Poles Apart

Working on an old house has its challenges. The curtain poles arrived; four of them; in a package labelled 17kg!! The 18mm diameter poles themselves are solid steel; as are the cannon ball finials on the ends. The brackets holding them up are wrought steel, 5mm thick. The rings are the same material. I've got them all up (though not yet securely pinned together) without creating any dents in the floor or my feet

None of this is necessary. A light, hollow pole, an alloy finial, a lightweight, factory-rolled bracket, would be perfectly functional, and cheaper, and easier to erect, without risk to toenails. I tell myself I'm motivated by a desire for some abstract notion of 'quality' - the sort of thing I understood Robert Pirsig to be driving at when I read the book 50 years ago. But I think there is a bit of something like nostalgia in there too - pining for an age when everything was not factory-made, computer-controlled and uniform, when 'imperfections' generated individuality. So it's an indulgence, but there are worse ones

The price of my whimsy is not just financial. Metal this heavy does not flex or bend; uneven walls beget mis-aligned brackets, in which poles do not slot cleanly. Hand-drilled screw-holes are not precisely central, so the fixing of each bracket must be carefully tailored individually. Not all the cannon-balls would fit into any position - for reasons I could not fathom - requiring a game like a monochrome Rubik's cube to find them all a place

Despite all this, the poles are installed horizontal, at the same level and positioned centrally, unlike the ceiling, window-reveals, frames, cills or floor. I'm pleased. I'm grateful to the man in the hardware shop who advised me to use a drill 0.5mm smaller than the size specified on the wall-plugs - my concern about 17kg held up by 16 small screws is less than it would have been. Independent hardware shops are as rare as solid curtain poles. Use it or lose it