Did you know that it is commonly perceived…

 

That Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon surface were…

 

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”?

 

Well I’m sorry dear readers because what he actually said was this…

 

“Wild Thing, you make my heart sing, you make everything — groovy”.

 

However, the watching millions back home were permanently denied this version of events following the discovery, just moments before air-time, that NASA’s entertainment officer had in fact forgotten to pay their performance rights licence fees, and so, in the face of the day’s current copyright legislation, the “one small step” speech had to be quickly dubbed over it instead.

And on his return from his interplanetary exploits, the outraged Mr. Armstrong showed his disapproval and immediately left the space programme in disgust. And, after a brief spell with The Allman Brothers, he quietly settled back into polite society at Wapakoneta Ohio where he soon opened up ‘Neil’s Moon Shack’, a used guitar store, trading until the late ’80s when the market began to mysteriously decline.

“I don’t blame synthesizers” said Neil rather amicably, “I think it was The Cure that were ultimately responsible. Young folk mistakenly came to associate the guitar with fat, mascara’d English panty-waists, and chose to follow Rap music instead. And I can’t say I can particularly blame them.”

 

The ‘Performance Rights Licence Fee Fiasco’

wasn’t the only misfortune to befall the Apollo 11 mission either.

 

Micheal Collins Only man in existence not to be in this photo

 

Irish rebel leader Michael Collins was seen to be left stranded in the orbiting mother capsule following an until now, undisclosed dispute with the then NASA tailors, Ritblat & Son of Dallas, who deliberately withheld the third moon suit pending the receipt of payment of the previously “agreed remuneration”

NASA never did settle the bill, and although the Ritblats retained the third moon suit for their own purposes, the original sequins were subsequently removed, and later reappeared upon Elvis Presley’s Vegas jump suit.

 

And Apollo 11 was not alone in their ‘Space Suit-Related Ructions’.

 

On the following mission, Apollo 12 astronaut Charles Conrad Jr was to discover that, for the sake of cashing in her $5 laundry voucher, Mrs Aldrin had declined the dry-clean option, and had in fact put her husband’s moon suit “in with the whites” at home (Tumble dried at 200 degrees Fahrenheit), thus irreversibly reducing the ill-befallen overalls in size.

Consequently, during mid-mission on the moon, while on stooping to collect various intergalactic geological samples, Conrad inadvertently split the ass out of the pants of his suit, (hence the introduction of the verb ‘To Moon’).

Unfortunately for us lesser mortals, this instantaneously curtailed the whole mission as a television event for the viewers back home on Earth, as sponsors across the South, in fear of losing their hard gained family support, clamoured to withdraw all their advertising funding. “It was like one of them Mexican films!” said one. And Charles Conrad Jr. never worked again because of it.

 

Thus, with the NASA space program now reduced to only one remaining space-suit…

 

The Apollo 13 mission was to have featured only the lone Captain Jim Lovell walking on the moon; yet even this mission was to be dogged with misfortune as rookie co-pilot Kevin Bacon, (at the request of a rapidly balding, ginger haired director of operations best known for his ‘happier days’) attempted to jettison human waste products from the ship.

He keyed into the onboard computer a completely wrong statutory code sequence, and unwittingly occasioned a ‘blow-back situation’, while helplessly watching in horror as his colleagues were sprayed with ‘the living daylights’ within the confines of the inside of the capsule.

Desperate to make amends and somewhat rather foolishly, Bacon then bravely ventured to alleviate the on-board methane levels with a naked flame, only to bring about a catastrophic explosion which effectively ended the whole mission; not to mention his career in space! (Tragically and perhaps quite poetically, Lovell never returned to the moon, yet managed to eke out a living promoting organic fertilizer in Texas, before becoming a ride technician at Disney’s Space Mountain).

And so, now completely space suit-less and totally out of contract with RCA records, the 1960s ended quite bleakly for the American space program along with NASA, who were to find that the 1970s, and the onset of Disco in particular, had become increasingly more difficult for them to handle.

And that my friends, is how ‘Moonwalking’, just for the want of a few ‘documents‘, was to be no more… Or was it?

Cue Micheal Jackson…

 

Isn’t it funny how a few scraps of documentation

 could quite effectively end the whole space race?

 

Well believe it or not, it’s pretty much the same in the handyman game, as it is in many other businesses. To trade legally in this day and age, there are quite a few ‘must have’ documents required when setting up shop.

 

Moon WalkerHere’s a short list of the ones I have had to collect and maintain along the way…

An ABN for taxation purposes

Record of Registration for Business Name through ASIC

A current Public Liability Insurance Certificate

Domain Name Registration for hosting this site

White Card for workplace health and safety compliance

And for good measure, a couple more I’m currently working on getting…

Blue Card (police check) for working among children and the infirm

CM3 Registration, a contractor WHS prequalification system (a register of WHS compliant companies)

 

So in short, what I’m trying to say is. Before you engage the services of any handyman. For your own peace of mind, be sure to ask about his credentials. Does he have the right documentation needed to run a handyman business? And more importantly, will he still be there to guarantee his work for you?

Do we have a problem with that… Houston?

 

© Andy Robinson, Localad Services Handyman Assist

If you have enjoyed reading this article… Be sure to check out my many other PostsOr better still, for up to the minute notifications of what I am up to, why not subscribe here for free?

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This