The Neat Tweak

I used to service my own vehicles. There used to be a carburettor and a distributor. If these were not set correctly, the whole vehicle would splutter helplessly without power. In other words, the whole machine, the culmination of thousands of years of research and quite possibly costing a lot of money, would suddenly become a pile of useless junk.

My first vehicle (which I shared with my brother when I was only fifteen) was an old left-hand-drive Willys Jeep. After re boring the cylinders, grinding the valves, putting in new gaskets and spending a great deal of time and love on it, it still wouldn't go properly. It spluttered and stalled and we thought that all the time and effort we had spent on it had been utterly wasted: now it was only fit for the scrap-heap.

That was when we discovered the magic of the NEAT TWEAK. There were two: one was to loosen the distributor and push it clockwise or anti-clockwise. The other was to adjust a little screw in the carburettor that controlled the amount of fuel sent to the cylinders.

These two tiny adjustments made the difference between a pile of junk and an exhilaratingly useful vehicle.

Sometimes a tiny adjustment can bring about a huge and earth-changing result. Certainly steady work and sustained effort by millions of people is indispensable. But sometimes all that work appears to be fruitless and in comes somebody with a tiny screwdriver and puts the whole thing right (probably taking all the glory) with a single NEAT TWEAK.