Things We Keep
The chair I fixed four times
Three of those fixes were wrong and one of them was wrong in a way that took a year to show up. What I should have done on the first evening, written down so I stop doing it.
26 Jul 26Tom
Notebook
Things We Keep
Tom’s notebook. Repairs, materials, and the argument that most broken things are only broken in one place.
5 entries
Things We Keep
Three tools fix nine things out of ten
People ask me what to buy and expect a list of twenty. It’s three, plus a torch, and the money is better spent on one decent version of each than on a set of forty in a plastic case.
24 May 26Tom
Things We Keep
The washing machine wasn’t broken
It wouldn’t drain, it was eleven years old, and we’d already looked at new ones. Then I took the filter out. There was a 2p, a hair clip and something I have chosen not to identify.
7 Dec 25Tom
Things We Keep
The radiator that was cold at the top
Cold at the top, hot at the bottom. Anna had put a jumper on and mentioned it twice and I had said I’d look at it, twice, over about five weeks. It took four minutes and a fifty-pence key.
30 Nov 25Tom
Things We Keep
Sharpening things
Anna had been cutting tomatoes with a knife that could not cut a tomato, and had adapted by pressing harder, which is how people cut themselves. Ten minutes on a stone and it is a different knife.
15 Jun 25Tom