Let’s do this together

COMMUNITY CORNER

I don’t know about you, but I’d happily pay for two weeks in Hotel Quaratina – mini bar, room service, no exercise, the entire back catalogue of Netflix at your fingertips, and just dial 0 when something needs to be fixed.

Meanwhile, here at Dark Lord Towers, things are beginning to break down – and I don’t mean just me. The oven door has gone so I have to use duct tape to keep it shut when cooking, and also the shower’s thermostat is broken so it only has two settings – ooh-that’s-hot and arrrrgghhhh.

Luckily this doesn’t affect Jesse much as she only has a passing relationship with the bathroom these days.

The broken machine that’s upset us the most is the toaster, which has just stopped working. It’s an ancient British-made Dualit device that’s supposed to last a lifetime, but clearly the amount of toast we get through in this house has been enough for several lifetimes.

It’s been on its way out for years – the filaments had burned out, and it took several goes to toast slices of bread. It would toast one side, and then you’d have to flip it round – get the timing wrong and you’d be explaining your unique cooking method to a very grumpy fire crew.

It survived being fed cheese by a toddler Dark Lordette, and being poked with wooden chopsticks to dislodge burning muffins that were too fluffy and wide for the slots, and also falling into a sink full of water, and then left to dry out.

As a child who grew up on terrifying public information adverts, when I decided to see if it worked again after its bath, I wore rubber gloves and wellies to insulate me, and flicked the switch on the wall with a wooden brush handle. All was fine, which made me look a bit silly.

I can honestly say the toaster is the heart of our house and I refuse to just dump it, so I’m going to try replacing the fuse first. There were always loads of them in the kitchen drawer-thatholds-everything when I was a kid, along with candles, batteries and string – but then the lights were prone to going off in the 1970s.

These days my universal kitchen drawer is a microcosm of life in 2021 – six different types of wine opener, unused chopsticks from takeaways, and packets of buttons from new clothes that wear out before they need a new button.

So I’m taking The Dark Lord off to find a hardware shop for a half-term treat and buy a packet of fuses. It’s going to be a steep learning curve for her since she barely knows her way round a screwdriver.

Not that I’m the best person to teach her DIY as I don’t know what most tools are called either. My dad just used to say “hand me that bloody thing, will you?” and I’d know what he was talking about.

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

If you would like to sign up to the Mirror’s coronavirus email newsletter up full of the to date stories and information go to... mirror.co.uk/ newsletter