Stud Finder

Studs are not what they were. They're no longer associated with lusty, lingering looks across a crowded, darkened room. As a middle-aged, new home owner I'm surrounded by studs, and fascinated by them but for different reasons to the youngster gripping her Southern Comfort and ginger ale in a sticky-carpeted pub.

Although I'm still looking to nail a stud, the nail is now literal. Looking for one has a lot more to do with tapping and if you're hearing has been dessimated by the Bee Gees screeching through your iPod, there's a nifty little tool that you can use to find them. It looks easy and positively fun in the picture.

First things first.

Last week I watched, intrigued, as a friend tapped across my walls with a look of consternation and concentration. Studs were found and followed. But upon his departure when I mimmicked the exercise, I could disern no difference in sound from whatever or wherever I tapped. It was not for lack of knocking, as my knuckles were distinctly red from the rapping.

It was because of my dismal failure at being able to distinguish a stud from a live cable that I found myself in the hardware aisle at K-mart. Drills, hammers, crow bars and tool 'things' crammed the shelves vying for my attention. It was under the eight metre retractable tape measure and above a vicious looking tool 'thing' that I found it. The Stud Finder. It sits in front of me as I tap, and although I haven't actually been able to liberate it from it's plastic entombment, it will be disinterred and find its way around the walls any day soon.

I do intend to tap across the walls in the hope of nailing a stud or hanging a mirror but as I sit here in the banality of my own thoughts, an opportunity for digression has arisen.

Have you taken a close look at your reflection recently? A pond is kind but if you've had the misfortune to live with a bathroom mirror crucified by halogen bulbs you'll be more than aware that with the ripples of time comes the growth of your own Magnum. Suddenly hair is sprouting up in all sorts of places where in Victorian times you could very well have been a major exhibit in a travelling curiousity show.

Whatever happened to Magnum PI? I wonder if his magnificent upper lip adornment is still intact? Possibly not because I think it may have landed on me.

Forget the Stud Finder, where are my tweezers?