Fixtures and Fittings



There was once a young man who decided to be a poodle-clipper. He felt
that he had a natural bent for it, and he had been told that a
fashionable poodle-clipper could charge his own price for his
services. But his father urged him to seek another profession. "It is
an uncertain life, poodle-clipping," he said, "To begin with, very
few people keep poodles at all. Of these few, only a small proportion
wants its poodles clipped. And, of this small proportion, a still
smaller proportion is likely to want its poodles clipped by _you_."
So the young man decided to be a hair-dresser instead.


I thought of this story the other day when I was bargaining with a
house-agent about "fixtures," and I decided that no son of mine
should become a curtain-pole manufacturer. I suppose that the price of
a curtain-rod (pole or perch) is only a few shillings, and, once made,
it remains in a house for ever. Tenants come and go, new landlords buy
and sell, but the old brass rod stays firm at the top of the window,
supporting curtain after curtain. How many new sets are made in a
year? No more, it would seem, than the number of new houses built. Far
better, then to manufacture an individual possession like a
tooth-brush, which has the additional advantage of wearing out every
few months.