Tell us about a talent you’d love to have… but don’t.      Photographers, artists, poets: show us TALENT.

I am not without talent, but unfortunately my skills tend toward the ephemeral.  That’s a posh way of saying that I’m not good at practical things. For instance, I’m no good as a handyman…..  I have a talent to amuse, but you wouldnt be happy with me putting up your shelves. I can actually assemble flat pack furniture, but I might have a few nuts and bolts left over.  I’m dangerous with an electric drill and wisely, have never attempted to use a chainsaw.

I’m good at inventing ephemeral things, tunes, stories and poems. I’d really like to be able to invent useful things.  I would have loved to have a workshop where I made fascinating objects that solved the world’s problems. I’d have been a backroom boy with a soldering iron. (My soldering is closer to welding).

I’ve chosen a photo of an inventor, completely forgotten now apart from his tomb.  Here lies Charles Pigeon (with Madame Pigeon)  in the cemetery of Montparnasse in Paris.  He doesnt so much lie as recline, reading by the light of his invention, a gasoline powered lamp.  Mrs P looks like she’d rather put the light out and get some sleep.

M. Pigeon’s lamp was soon eclipsed by Edison and his electric light, but he was a good practical inventor. The lamp made his fame, fortune and a small place in history.  That would do for me…. I’m not that fussed about history, but a fortune would be useful.

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