Saturday 9 March 2024

A useful local resource

Some time ago, the pin that fastens the hands of our ex-Aunty Jessie clock went missing.  The local monthly repair café offers clock repairs, so I gently put a sock in the mechanism and took it along.  All sorts of interesting things going on: a bike fettler (who was also mending a chair when I arrived), someone overhauling and sharpening gardening tools, someone doing textile repairs and a chap doing electrical and mechanical works.  It turned out that this last also loves fiddling with clocks.  When my turn came round, he told me he usually cut down and filed a paper clip to fit, but my clock called for something finer.  So he went and scrounged a couple of pins from the textiles lady, and cut and filed one to fit.  No charge, but a request for donations, gift aided, so that’ll help marginally with my tax bill.

There was also someone there to test electrical stuff before any work was done on it, and it turned out to be the husband of one of my former bench colleagues.  We’d last seen the two of them when we did our last Macmillan coffee morning pre-Covid, so had a nice catch-up.

The EV charger is due to be installed on Monday, so we’ve done a bit of clearing out in the garage.  Two black bags full in the bin, and we have a booking at the tip next week.  Egg2 is full of junk: odd offcuts of timber, a fluorescent light fitting that I’d hung on to for no good reason, and much else.  Years ago I bought a wall-hung bicycle rack, with a view to hanging it on the back wall of the smaller garage.  Never got round to it, and of course the smaller garage is no more.  So the bike rack ought to depart tomorrow, Freecycled to someone who can make use of it.  The bike, meanwhile, reposes in the summerhouse, and it’s moot whether either of us will ever ride it again.  Still, I’ll take it along to the repair café next month and see if the chap can get the gears working, just in case!

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