They walk in sideways. Like a crab you know. Their eyes are shifty. Very very shifty. A species I dread more than wood-kewers and dry-rot. When their eyes finally have finished their survey of your precious "in-case-I-need-it" piles, they raise their eyes to yours with the pleading of a puppy at a table-side. "Het jy nie vir my scrap hout nie?" "Do you have some scrap wood for me?"

Perhaps I am feeling cranky, perhaps I have seen too many of them. Perhaps I am generalising. So what?! Some people are racist, others are sexist, me, me, I am emotional about wood. A person who truly has limited resources is welcome to come and collect pieces of wood and such. Damn, I'll even give them scrap glue. Come to think of it, I'll even give them scrap tools. But this species drive big cars and have jewellery that would get De Beers at an auction. Get my drift? Their is no such thing as scrap wood. Period. In its last breath in my shop it is a form of heat by which time it started off as a piece of workshop furniture, was then promoted in a parallel fashion to a jig, was then cut into a tool-holder and then an address book. After this it became a wedge then a missile to throw at the neighbours dog-who-pisses-on-my wheel. After recovery it goes into a box mentally marked "I might need it". Then and only then can it possibly be defined as a renewable fuel-source. By the way, at this stage I am speaking of sheets of chipboard and the odd pine scrap. I am not going to get onto indigenous timbers and my precious exotics. And they call woman menopausal?!
I need something cool, I feel a definite flush.

Anyone have some scrap money for me?