Fernand Martin

Here’s Stu’s dispatch of niceties for this week’s It’s Not Us.

‘Along with humming along at the exact same pitch with my Hoover, chewing on polystyrene and listening to bands which girls hate, my other favourite thing at the moment are bizarre automata and mechanical toys. These things put Playstations and Xboxes to shame. I have no idea how they work and spend ages looking at scribbled annotated notes I’ve found in various old books and publications trying to figure out how I can make one, but to no avail. Yet. This here is a clockwork tin peacock by a genius who went by the name of Fernand Martin around 1900.’