Small victory for the dogged

Ihave nothing useful to say about coronavirus, but I do bring hope for those with dodgy sliding doors. My dodgy sliding doors belong to the linen cupboard in the laundry. The linen cupboard would be an airing cupboard if there were a hot water cylinder in it, but the hot water cylinder in my house, for reasons that I don’t understand but that emphatically do not include ease of access or peace of mind, is in the roof, which means that above my head both day and night some 50 gallons of scalding water are quietly seething. It’s the cylinder of Damocles.

But anyhow, the doors that slide across the linen cupboard have slowly evolved into doors that stick. When they started to stick I fixed them by swearing. When swearing no longer worked I applied force. When force no longer worked I was thrown back on those remedies of last resort, observation and reason.

I lifted the stuck doors off to reveal the little railroad tracks on which they are meant to slide. These had worked loose and filled with the gunk that gathers in the lives of all but the most aggressively house-proud, the dark unnameable stuff you’ll find behind fridges, or under big toe nails.

I cleaned the railroads with detergent and screwed them tight to the floor and polished them till they shone like a child’s smile and I fitted the doors back onto them and the doors still stuck.

Off came the doors again for their own inspection. Each bottom corner held a plastic wheel housed in a brass fitting that had the chunky feel of something manufactured a long time ago. Two of the wheels were damaged beyond repair. At the back of each fitting was a screw. To my astonishment when I tried to unscrew it, it unscrewed.

‘‘I don’t suppose,’’ I said to the assistant in the 15-hectare hardware store, ‘‘that you’d stock something like this,’’ and I held up the brass fitting for inspection.

‘‘How many do you want?’’ he said. ‘‘Calloo callay, oh frabjous day,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ll take four.’’

‘‘They’re $69 each.’’

‘‘I see,’’ I said. ‘‘And you don’t have anything

. . .’’ ‘‘Cheaper? No. Though I suppose if you knew what you were doing you could try winkling out the rivet on the cotter pin spindle bracket and just popping in a new wheel.’’

‘‘How much is a new wheel?’’

‘‘Twelve bucks.’’

I bought two.

‘‘I’d keep the receipt if I were you,’’ he said. I wasn’t sure I liked his tone.

Back home I laid the fitting on the garage bench. To remove the dodgy wheel I needed to widen the gap between two brass plates. Inserting the tip of a screwdriver between the plates I tapped the handle with a hammer.

I found the fitting in a distant corner. I never did find the dodgy wheel.

Attaching the new wheel was a simple matter of reinserting the screwdriver, tapping it gently till it needed just one more tap, giving it just one more tap, then fetching the fitting again.

But, to the dogged the spoils, as my old school song never put it. My eventual spoils were a pair of doors with two new wheels, and only two fingers in sticking plaster.

I fitted the doors back into their housing and onto the polished rails, held my breath and tried to slide them. They slid to the right. They slid to the left. They slid at a finger’s touch. They slid like Torvill and Dean. The only noise to be heard was the sound of angels singing.

Do your worst, coronavirus, I have lived.