Shell; as in I'd like to crawl into it....

Spent last night "helping" the man connect an amplifier. Being last in the queue when they gave out cones (colour receptors), this is always a gas.

What colour is the lead that goes into the back of that speaker? Does the brown wire goes into the black feed?"

There isn't a brown wire. It's red.

OK, so what colour is the lead that goes into the other speaker?

It's red too.

Pause.

OK so which red wire is thicker... or are there more lines on the left one?

No, they are both the same.

Longer pause.

They can't be. One of them has to be brown. The other one is purple.

I scratch my head and go upstairs to find a pair of glasses that I can actually see with and come back to find him stripping wires.

The banana plugs don't fit. Where are my tools?

(These were the same ones we couldn't find the night before when he was fixing his guitar).

I don't know. Want me to do it?

Silence.

I go away for a bit and try to find the tools again, although I know that I looked in all the same places yesterday. No joy, so I return to the fold - this time with a gin and tonic.

There you are. Now, which speaker did the brown lead go into?

PS For those guys who might feel that I'm being a bit hard on the man - well yes, I am. It is a real sod when the cables are running under the floor, the room is poorly lit and the colour coding we put on the wires months ago has almost disappeared. Makes for a better story this way though!