Our friends Jacques and Mandy once told us there are blue and pink jobs in life and one of the blue jobs is fixing things. So, when anything in the van breaks, I get my ‘fix it’ kit out and try to, well, fix it!
Recently I was in the loo and I heard Linda cry out “Oh no!” Worried I called “What’s the matter” “My coffee machines broken!” she replied distraught. Linda, as many of you will know is a fully paid up member of Caffeine Aholics. (Once when we had to drive to a port in the USA to ship our Franki van home, we had to get up early and the van was packed up so no morning coffee was available. Linda had the map upside down, had no idea which city we were in let alone the street and she was shaking so hard the van was in danger of keeling over on corners. We had to stop and get a pot of coffee “to go” to stabilise her before finding the port. )
Anyway, Linda without her coffee machine without her back up dependency drug of Alcohol is not a prospect one conjours up when thinking of relaxing time, then add the 5:30 daily prayer calls and a full melt down was on the cards.
So, out with the “fix it” kit it was.
Now there are two types of fix for me, firstly there’s the grab the tablet / Phone / navigator and go tap tap tap with the keyboard and five seconds later hand it back saying “There you go” to a look of utter frustration and anger from Linda who’s spent at least 20 minutes trying to do what I did in five seconds one handed whilst reading my book.
Then there’s the ‘proper’ fix, where something is actually broken and needs mending. Generally I’m pretty good at these but confusingly they also fall in to two categories. Firstly the genuine broken, then the “It’d help if you turned the power on first” kind. The first kind of fix results in Linda being happy and thinking I’m a hero and getting lots of brownie points which I know it’s hard to believe but I like! The second type results in Linda being furious at me , even though it isn’t my fault.
So as advice to other guys (this has to be a universal issue I’m sure) the answer lies in whatever the problem is, getting the fix it kit out, taking some screws off here and there, remove a side if possible. Scratch your chin a bit, put the side back on and thenswitch it on and for extra points clean it too and then go “There you go” That way we’re all happy.
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