Dave sat down in his comfy armchair. It creaked and moaned in protest as his ample backside fidgeted until it was in just the right place. Then he did as he always did. He reached forward and flicked on the TV with the remote and settled down to enjoy a beer.

Dave was a proper beer drinker, none of this continental lager for him. He liked something home-brewed, English through and through. He enjoyed his first beer. And he enjoyed the next five. Each time he pulled open the can the hiss of the escaping gas and the gentle tap of the widget against the metal sides drummed its way into his mind as it did every night, sat in front of the luminous box in the corner.

Only tonight, maybe because he’d had a harder day at the benefits office, he fell asleep in his chair. And in his brain that hiss of gas and hint of widget went running through his dreams…

High on a hill, just outside Tadcaster is a brewery. It is a tall, slightly forlorn looking building, all functional brick and belching towers. But next door to it is…

A Shed.

And not just any shed.

A Pink Shed.

And although it is standing, or rather, leaning a little way away from the main building it is in fact an integral part of the production process. The Shed, in all its pink and fluffy glory, is the home of…

The Widget.

This is where the widget inside your can of beer began life as a humble piece of non-moulded, EU regulation conforming, plastic. Inside the shed is the creature that gives birth to 3000 widgets per hour (with a 15 minute break every 4 hours)

This is the mother of all widgets.

This is Martha.

Martha stands at the far end of the shed as her yawning, burping, stomach churns out a succesion of perfectly formed Widget offspring. She’s bright green although undeniably fading around the edges. A complicated succession of buttons and levers take the place of her face, but in the right light, from the right angle the keyboard could almost be the gaping smile of a proud mother. Relentlessly she produces on time and on schedule, keeping the brewery equivilent of the midwifery profession happy. Once released into the world her babies drop onto a conveyor belt and are whisked straight from their mothers love and into widget school.

Have you ever wondered what the widget in your can is getting up to?

He’s swimming.

Armed with only a snorkel and a pair of flippers your widget spends his day swimming at the bottom of the can keeping the gas in your beer on the move.

This amazing development in the history of mankind was the brainchild of one Ernest Wigerton-Smyth. Just as Matha is the mother of every widget, Eric is the father of a million and more tiny plastic progeny.

And he is very proud. To start with he kept a picture of every one on his office wall. He stopped after the ceremonial hundred thousandth widget had been produced when Jim ‘Ringpull’ Smith complained that his walls in the office next door were bowing in a way not entirely in keeping with the rules of the space-time continumn.

Anyway, there was in the beginning just one flaw in Ernie’s revolutionary idea. Widget’s don’t swim. And that is why they are sent to the International Widget Swimming Academy.

The swimming academy is housed in the back of the main brewery building. When the beer maker had first had this temple of alcohol designed this large well lit space had been the workers chapel. Each Sunday they would spend their mornings worshipping a rather stricter, more teetotal God than the one they did Monday to Saturday 7 ‘til 6. Now though, in these more enlightened times the workers only worked 7 ‘til 5.30 and they didn’t have to clock in with the almighty on a Sunday.

So it was that this large, open space with tall, austere windows was lying disused and so became the perfect place to install a swimming pool and training facility. The conveyor belt led straight from the womb of Martha to the open arms of the extended family of uncles and aunties who were the swimming coaches. Once there a newborn widget was shoved into a rubber ring and pushed out into the water for the first time. It was a never ending process (or at least, never ending for as long as Martha’s shift lasted.) As one new widget joined the pool for the first time, another left and graduated to his first pair of flippers. On average, it took a widget about 3 days to learn how to swim and another 4 to learn how to swim in beautiful little circles in a confined space. And so it was that the earlier inhabitants of the chapel had learnt of the world being created in 7 days, here and now, it took just as long to churn out confident amphibious plastic.

Finally it was on to the last stage of this part of a young widgets life. The classroom. A swimming widget is fine, but he’s nothing without a classical education. So it was that a widget spent 8 weeks learning the basics of Mathematics, Physics, Latin and History. At the end of this 56 day period of enlightenment they were sent to their final destiny…

The Can.

And from there they flowed and swam their way into your home…

Or more specifically, into Dave’s home. And Dave’s mind.

With a grunt and half a final snore, Dave awoke from his slumber. The TV was showing repeats of daytime programmes with subtitles so it must have been 5am ‘cos that’s when the deaf are always awake.

You’d like to think that for a moment he stopped and looked at his empty beer can with a new respect.

But he didn’t.

He chucked it into the bin and stumbled and cursed his way to bed.

And the Widget in that can?

He had been number 10,045,329 of Ernie’s progeny. And now he was all washed up, inside an empty tin. His swimming had been done, his work was over, and as every good widget learnt in the converted chapel of a swimming pool, now it was off to the almighty can in the clouds.