This story has two main characters. The above small handaxe is one, made in the lab last week from an unpromising large flake. I actually really like it although it is asymmetrical, and the cutting edges on each side are both sharp but of different character. It is almost as if each side was made by a different artisan.

The second character in this story is our kaput combi-boiler. It stopped working last week and we have not been able to get an engineer out who could solve the problem yet. In Manchester currently it is below zero degrees most nights, so apart from the wood burner room the house is pretty cold all the time. The secret of good comedy is timing 😐.

Anyway, back to the handaxe. As usual I handle these things a lot after I have made them. In getting to know the artefact haptically it occurs to me what I may want to change, and ways in to making those changes.

Picking up the handaxe first thing yesterday morning I was struck by how cold it was to the touch. It seemed to have absorbed the coldness that had pervaded the house overnight, and through the past week. It was in fact ‘stone cold’, and that was my overriding and surprising response to the object.

I was experiencing a different and unrealised capacity of the object, however, as I continued to hold and handle it I could feel its ‘body temperature’ changing, blending with that of my hand which enclosed it, and harmonising with my body temperature in general.

It made me think about how the human hand creates a haptic relationship with the object, finding a way of holding that seems to fit. However, it also alerted me to the fact that the object also responds to the human touch by warming to the person.

Whilst I grasp the science behind an inert piece of stone absorbing heat from my body and changing temperature, I was surprised by the process and think in pre-Enlightenment periods this experience may have been understood and explained in different ways, perhaps in terms of an object becoming part of the human body.

It is also interesting to think about in terms of the occult skills necessary to use the handaxe in for example a butchery process. Would the tool and the process be separated as a noun and a verb?

This is the start of an idea, however, it is Saturday, Shakeel has possibly fixed the boiler and the house is warm. A story with a happy ending!