R Is For Repair

Putting All The Pieces Back Together

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

I’ve always enjoyed fixing things. But, lest you get the wrong impression, let me assure you that I am not your normal handyman. I’m not good with power tools, I’m not gifted when it comes to dealing with hammers and nails and wrenches and chainsaws.

But if you’ve broken something, bring it round and chances are I’ll be able to put it together again. The Authorbloglets, from the time they were very little, had supreme faith in my ability to painstakingly glue things back together again.

Some years ago, one of them dropped a very large novelty ceramic Tweety Bird cup. Dropped it on the tiles, that is. There were shards of the cup everywhere.

But the Authorbloglet implored me to try. Just to try. It didn’t matter if I failed, but surely I could attempt it?


So of course I did. And solving the hundred-piece jigsaw became irresistible. Piece by piece, I managed to put it all back together again. It still sits somewhere at Casa Authorblog as testimony to my patience. Maybe it all stems from childhood hours spent putting together intricate little pieces in my aeromodelling days.

But my true test came on a scorching January morning during our recent summer of the bushfires. I was up early and at my desk in the study when I heard a strange sound. Something had fallen. Something fairly heavy. But I could not identify what it was.

I walked around the house and then realised a crystal candlestick had been knocked over by a lace curtain billowing in the morning breeze.

The nether regions of the candlestick were intact. But the top was, as they say in the classics, history.

But if ya have a little time to spare and ya have the right mindset, there’s no knowing what ya can successfully repair next. And the same approach applies to life itself.


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