Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
My 8 year old's eyes lit up when I announced that we would fix the vacuum ourselves this time. The bloody thing has broken down many times before, simply pull the cable a little too hard, and you're off to the repair shop. In fact, on our very first cleaning mission together - both wheels fell off - not once but repeatedly! On return to the dealer they gave me new wheels - thanks guys, but how many falling-off wheels did you think we really need?
So we couldn't believe our luck when we discovered we had the correct 'torx' head that would allow the 8 year old to unscrew the engine from the chassis, gain access to the retractable power cord and hopefully reconnect it again. He was loving it, everything went just great; remove the filter, engine out, retractable wheel clipped out, unclip the wheel, and bang, just like that time I tried to 'fix' a wind-up alarm clock when I was little myself - springs and cables everywhere!
Sadly, there will be no more stealing Lego parts for this sucker, no more terrifying the cat either, just a lengthy visit to that great cleaning facility we like to call the dump.
Comments