Dr Maclean and his wondrous machine

One of the chaps out at our workshops has an Australian/German girlfriend who makes her living by... well actually, I am not too sure, but I know it involves travelling the world giving motivational talks to business men and other corporate staff, with the intention of... well, I am not too sure about that either, which is why I asked him to try and explain exactly what she does again, even though he did try to tell us about 5 years ago. I am a bit slow on the uptake.

He - rather testily - reminded us that she had invented games for whole corporations to play, but did not get far enough down that line to explain exactly what these games involved.

"Don't you remember," he said, "that about 2 years ago, I asked you all to come up with an idea for a new invention, and - as one man and simultaneously - you all shouted out, 'A WANKING MACHINE!'? At that point, I gave it up as a bad job and never mentioned it again"

None the wiser, we settled down to try and get at least some rudimentary idea of how to go about making a machine which would fulfil such a purpose, and  - again simultaneously - we all had a picture of some steam-powered contraption in our heads. Bear in mind that we are all over the age of sixty, which is probably why we had settled on steam as the best power-source for the task.

I envisaged the machine to look like a single wheel from an old steam-engine with a great piston and boiler attached, but with an extra arm extending - off-centre - from the rim of the flywheel with, possibly, some sort of hand fashioned in rubber attached to the end of it. One's man-servant would be - dressed in a blue drill uniform with matching, peaked hat - furiously shovelling coal into the furnace, having fired it up an hour before serving the evening meal, or breakfast, depending on the hour.

I also heard - in my mind - the slow start of a great locomotive leaving a station, with the chuffing-sounds increasing in frequency as the train progresses. I did not - at the time - allow for a clutch on it, so I heard in my mind's ear the machine to go from a slow and sedate start to a frantic, 200-beats per-minute thrash, and the test-pilot screaming at the boffins to 'TURN IT OFF FOR GOD'S SAKE!'

As I always say, if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.