Roger Moroney: When it all goes too smoothly ...

Roger Moroney.

I touched upon that intriguing thing dubbed "Murphy's Law" some time back and should have known then that it would emerge again in my life ... because that's Murphy's Law.

So it came to pass a week or so back that I set forth to assemble a swing and slide set which would provide a diversion for the grandkids.

It arrived in a large oblong box and was heavy because, of course, it was made from tubes of steel.

When I say steel, I have to add the box came with a stamped tag on one end which announced it had been created somewhere in China - which in itself can create a sort of "uh-oh" effect on occasions - but the price was modest and it did all appear to be there.

Tubes, pipes, slightly fragile-looking plastic seats, lots of nuts, bolts and washers, all tagged with descriptions such as Z1 and A2 and G4 and G8, etc.

Then there was the assembly instruction booklet which, using a colourful form of pidgin English, detailed how to put this structure together.

I was quite taken by one line in it which was along the lines of "assembly must be safe or the swing will not be safe". Fancy that.

Now this assembly pursuit was not the first for me. I put together a sort of swinging seat thing with an adjustable fabric roof which, it has to be said, went together well, although after just one summer of sunshine the fabric roof disintegrated.

The rest of it is still there, now nicely oxidised and powdery.

So, I set about learning the art of assembly booklet translation and attached B1 (or whatever it was tagged) to B2, using a couple of V5s and G6s.

I was slightly bewildered to discover there was actually one too many of the bolts required to put the two big framework pieces together but figured the manufacturers were covering their bases.

I was also slightly bewildered that among the tools which came with it there was no hammer because a hammer is vital, given the holes drilled throughout the spars and poles just don't quite line up and the bolts require several persuasive blows to get them to pass through.

However, that was OK and despite the fact two of the main structural joints had only one bolt each to secure them, all was going well.

I had begun to master the peculiar codes masquerading as instructions and it was all beginning to come together.

That meant the time was ripe for the emergence of Murphy's Law ... that fine old adage about "if something can go wrong it will go wrong".

For despite the slight mis-alignment of some drill holes and assembly drawings which taxed the imagination, everything had simply gone just too well.

Nothing was amiss and I began to get the jitters.

The slide popped into place (sort of) and the swings did indeed freely swing.

The dual swing seat thing was the final stage and it required two drilled spars and "U-joint" bolts and spacers.

All the parts were there.

The cynic in me was a little bemused.

Surely, surely something had to fall at the last hurdle and indeed, it did.

Murphy had not let me down because the final assembly stage had.

One of the spars had been incorrectly drilled and would not line up and the holes in one spar were on the wrong side anyway.

I was disappointed, yet I was, in an odd sort of way, relieved. Something had to go wrong and it had.

The suppliers were advised and eventually came back with the option of providing a refund or providing a replacement unit - which also required me to disassemble the dodgy one and send that back.

Now I like a challenge but there is a point where one has to take stock of the situation, so to speak.

So I weighed it all up, considered the options and decided that no, we'd rather have a lash at bodging what we had, the best we could, rather than tempt fate for the second time in a fortnight.

I suspect that in that factory in faraway Beijing there is a drill operator by the name of ... Murphy.

- Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.