Trevor Baylis, the delightfully dotty inventor of the wind-up radio (by which I mean the radios you wind up to make work, not the ones that wind you up and stop you from working), lives on an island in the middle of the Thames where flooding is clearly a regular thing. Trevor’s got it taped though: his sockets, hand-painted dark green to match the walls but with white plugs and cables attached, are sited at waist height, and there are odd little wooden contraptions that clip across the bottom of the doors.  The piece de resistance is a raised concrete area outside the house upon which chairs and tables have been placed in the manner of a front garden.  It is painted grass green, and neatly demonstrates the distinction between capacity for invention and any sort of design sense.

Excerpt from Not Being First Fish, by P Spencer Beck, 2015