The art of repairing
If you have something that breaks, there are two avenues to explore. The first, and I daresay the most well-travelled one, is you biff it out and go and get another one. The second is you have a shot at fixing it.
I guess it’s called being practical for one can save a few bob if one decides to have a shot at fixing something.
Although, if the broken thing is part of the infrastructure so to speak, and if that means delving into the world of high voltage or explosive water pressure then call the people who make a living out of fixing such things.
I repaired a washing machine many years back after the spinning bowl thing shook itself loose from its mountings.
I bodged a couple of new ones and drilled holes and unearthed some bigger bolts and things and after about seven tortuous hours I finished the job.
And it worked.
Back to normal . . . sort of.
It vibrated a bit more but we got another couple of years out of it and I bored everyone I came across for that next couple of years with the story of how “I got it sorted no worries”.
And I did some minor repair jobbies on my motorcycles from time to time. My father was a champion fixer-upper. If we broke a toy he would fix it.
If the clock stopped ticking he’d take the back off and try and fix it.
I use the term “try and fix it” as sometimes he conceded practical defeat and so it would stay stuck on 8.37pm until the day it was decided to send it on its way.
There was another clock in the kitchen so what was the problem?
Had it been a relic, a crafted hand-medown from a generation or two past, then it would have been stored away . . . for the rainy day when we could afford to get some specialist cog and gear repairer to take it apart and heal it.
For there are some very clever people out there with very clever and skilful hands, and they are the invaluable ingredient when something historic, memorable, unique, antique or just plain old and cherished breaks.
This is where people like me, who will have a go at fixing a broken gate, turn to the “I might pass on this” approach.
I have seen some remarkable repair jobs carried out on delicate and rather rare artefacts, as well as equally remarkable re-binding of what had been (to the unskilled eye) very tatty and disintegrating old books.
So as long as the TV is working and you don’t need to call the repair chaps in, you will be able to sit back and watch in astonishment as a crew of clever and committed repairers ply their trade, in a place fittingly called The Repair Shop.
It is situated in a rural barn in Sussex and within that peaceful landscape things like furniture, clocks and ceramics and the occasional damaged old rocking horse and the like, are beautifully repaired.
Their skills are absorbing to watch being carried out, and when the appropriately titled The Repair Shop first screened in England it quickly drew an audience, as it will likely do here because it is so intriguing to watch, and at times emotional when someone’s cherished artefact is handed back to them in the shape it was when it was created so many decades earlier.
Those involved are members of a devoted crew or repairers across the land, and across the globe for that matter, who specialise in reviving treasured possessions.
Watching them at work is rather inspiring as well as entertaining, as you’ll likely end up going to hunt out that “old bit of junk” stored away somewhere because the winder thing broke or the lid cracked.
In this age of throwaway things it’s nice to see the pursuit of longevity.
It is so intriguing to watch, and at times emotional . . .