Express Rifle ...with a difference
WHEN MY DAUGHTER Kim was about seven years old, one of her favourite toys was a wooden rifle that I made for her one rainy afternoon out of a discarded feather duster handle and some scrap lumber. The only vaguely sophisticated element was that, being a bolt-action rifle, I bored out the breech-end and made a workable ‘bolt’ out of a left-over piece of wooden dowel with a screw at one end at right angles to the dowel.
The rifle was regarded as a toy and when her girlfriends came to visit, it was hauled out and played with. It was a favourite until one day, inexplicably, it was found smashed to pieces on our back
