First Aid In The Home

Trying to watch Rio Lobo while my Sunday dinner was being prepared, my concentration was broken by a primordial wail of uncertain emotional content from the kitchen.

Had her back gone again? In which case that would be dinner up the left.

Had Sunderland gone two goals down? No, they played yesterday.

Had the chicken spent two hours in the wrong oven? No, that would result in curses of despair.

As there were still sounds of activity from next door, I decided to pretend I hadn't heard.

Needless to say I was dragged into the crisis anyway. It transpired that a thumb had got in the way of a sharp knife, and blood was flowing. Luckily we were both First Aiders and the training kicked in in seconds. I turned the telly up a bit, and the injured party went to bandage up.

It is of couse impossible to find proper plasters when one hand is streaming blood, but the situation was saved with some toilet roll and parcel tape, and an excellent roast chicken dinner duly appeared!

Post Warrantry Technology

It's not so much the Mad Max world of this sort of thing,

heroic though it is, but more about living in a world where stuff sort of works and does a job, even though its full functionality has long vanished. It's not about being cheap, but more the pleasure of being actively involved in, rather than just consuming, a process.

For example:

Dropped on a rock and cracked. Impact point has been strengthened with a fillet of superglue. Also the wi-fi subsequently stopped working. This was inconvenient, especially when abroad, and various attempts were made to fix it, including jailbreaking the thing and trying non-approved software, but to no avail. 

But what the heck.

A bit more horrifying. The central heating control in the kitchen, which manages the sockets on the wall here, has ceased to function. By the way this is a picture of the back shed, not the kitchen. Just to make that clear. Replaced with a 24-hour timer switch, running to a four-way block, where the boiler and the water pump are connected. To control the central heating, just plug the other pump in/out as needed.

It's a man world.

See also the Indian concept of jugaad.

Light my fire

A rather nifty fire of bacon / chicken fat (in cat food bowl so it doesn't run), waste paper and scavenged wood. A bit spitty to start with, but it's nice to Stick it to the Man. Of doubtful legality in a smokeless zone and so best lit after dark.

The wood is important, as the rubbish will not burn down completely without it. Also note the lack of a grate; it all goes better on a bed of ash.

It ought to be possible to invent a domestic stove which could efficiently deal with household rubbish, of which there is tons. I suppose you would need some sort of scrubbing device to remove the noxious fumes from milk cartons, small rubber tyres, dead pets etc., but we got to the moon didn't we?

Maybe a compact version of this?

The Big Society

 

This item on the Road has had its button missing for some time. While it is possible to activate the device with the little finger (for those with digits slim enough), someone has kindly donated a cheap green biro the better to do the job with.

Update 15/10/12 - green biro has now been replaced with a red one.

Update 18/10/12 - button replaced

Bread Flour

We can buy most of the foodstuffs we need on the Road, with the odd 'glamour' excursion to St. George's Market (e.g. fish) and the Chinese Supermarket (e.g. olive oil, chickpeas). However bread flour is hard to come by locally and entails a surgical strike on the nearest Sainsbury's.

 It's going so well - up on the bus with two stout shopping bags, grab a basket, ignore the siren call of the other retail opportunities, six bags of the cheapest strong bread flour, and then retreat via the self check out island.

Which is where it all goes pear-shaped, with the machine telling me to get an assistant. She produces a magic card, makes a few mysterious entries, then tells me to proceed. I make a charming remark about life being one big intelligence test, which fails to raise a smile, and then proceed to mess it all up again. I look in the assistant's direction, and when she has finished a bit of banter with her colleagues, she works her magic again, without so much as catching my eye.

I slink off home, realising that I have now become a Useless Old Git.

After Sixty

Isn't it nice to be old
And be able to say what you think
To wear what you like, and eat what you like
And go to the pub for a drink.

Isn't it nice to have time
For activities during the day
Leave the washing undone, and stroll in the sun
While others are working away.

At last you can get a night's sleep
And take a nap during the day
Take the phone off the hook, and read a good book
That caller will soon go away.

So life after sixty is fun?
Well nobody wants to complain
But to tell you the truth, we've lost our youth
And wish we were sixteen again.

Enid Stocks