One of the enduring memories from my childhood was the periodic Araldite session. My dad would be mending something – things were usually mended, partly from economic necessity, partly on the principle that there was no sense wasting something that was fine save for the fact that one piece had become two – and the call would go up "has anyone got anything that needs mending". With a flurry of activity, anything else about the house that had been broken was offered up at the altar of repair although, in truth, this was relatively little, since things got mended when they got broken, rather than left in that state. Nonetheless the memory remains.
At this point, it’s probably useful to offer an explanation for the bewildered. Not those bewildered by the idea of repairing things: if you still don't get that, you’d best carry on with your consumptive lifestyle, pay your carbon tax and rest content in the knowledge that someone else is doing the dirty work for you. No, this is for those for whom the word Araldite conjures up nothing other than some bastard hybrid of Steptoe and Son and Superman.
Araldite is a two-part epoxy adhesive (I'm delighted to discover that my spellchecker at least recognises the name, if not the substance). The substance comes in two tubes: one of resin and one of hardener. You squeeze out a blob of resin and, adjacent to it, an equal-sized blob of hardener. Take a little matchstick (or toothpick for the health-conscious) and mix the two together thoroughly. Apply it to the cleaned surface of broken part A and bring it together with cleaned surface of broken part B. Hold, clamp, balance or otherwise make sure they stay in this position. It’ll start hardening in half an hour or so, but in 24 hours you’ve got the meanest, toughest bond that ever walked this earth.
So today’s session started with repairing a suitcase handle. Samsonite – despite their premium brand status – also manage to produce some utter tat, and in this case the tattiness was the fragility of the handle. This had broken before, so I’ve fully sussed how the case is put together, how to take off the handles, and exactly where the weak point lies in the handle mounts. A trip to Glasgow next week needs a case, so the case (which I have to confess has been sitting leering at me for weeks) must be fixed. I know what needs doing, so it’s just a question of gluing the offending pieces and working out a way of keeping them together.
Job done, surplus adhesive left. So the call goes out for other little mending jobs. I’m already aware of where the handles are weakest, so decide I might as well stick a blob on those that haven’t broken, as reinforcement. Then in comes running a hole punch (not strictly the punch but the little plastic bit that importantly positions paper for correctly-positioned holed). I’ve tried mending this before, and it hasn’t held (with superglue – cyanoacrylate – which is quick but brittle and not up to the job nor, it appears, recognised by my spellchecker).
So, enough left to stick this together. A bit of spillage over the sides, and it’ll be a rather tight fit, but it can easily be filed down afterwards. Dead easy putting the pieces together, but how to keep them together – that is the question. And who should come to the rescue, but Hilary Mantel. In fact Beyond Black, which is sitting in my ‘books to read’ pile and has a handy plastic cover so I can use it to hold the pieces level without getting glue on the book. Hmm, not quite: a few matchsticks help with support, but still it’s not quite there. Eventually I revert to a perennial problem-solver: sprung clamps (huge bag found in Lidl for a couple of quid), with a bit of paper to prevent the clamp getting permanently stuck to the pieces.
Finally, and a bit of a bold move this, an umbrella. A lovely, classic, wood-handled, black, full-length job. Destroyed outside Hammersmith tube station in an over-enthusiastic shaking off of the biblical weather a few weeks ago. I tend to favour the ‘spin’ approach, rather than the ‘push-pull’ approach to shaking off rain, but at that point realised that this is clearly the test of a well-built umbrella and this one – lovely as it is – isn’t that well built. What had happened was the top notch had broken and the ribs had come adrift from it (if it hasn’t even occurred to you to think about how an umbrella is put together, check out http://thecoffeehouse-angel.blogspot.com/2008/09/umbrella-talk.html). As a cheap umbrella, the ribs appear to simply sit in the top notch, so its integrity is important, and now it had lost a bit of the important plastic. So, with the umbrella fully opened, and carefully positioned to allow both illumination and easy access, a big blob of epoxy dropped in to fill the broken bit of top notch. This is probably the first step of a longer repair process: I’ll still have to cut grooves in it so the ribs can sit tightly in there. But, as with all of these things, better to try and repair than just to throw it out.
You may say: “Really? Or you could get a life”. And this is curious, since my work is all freelance and I’m acutely aware of the value of my time. But I increasingly realise that this is my own personal carbon tax. I could go out and buy another umbrella, case or whatever, and pay a suitable tax so the environmental cost of production is offset by throwing some money at the problem (if the notion of a carbon tax were to exist). Indeed by mending my own stuff, I could be accused of stealing work from the suitcase and umbrella artisans of [fill in any suitable low-wage economy with emerging industries where Western brands can sub-contract their dirty physical production, so their wallets are full and their hands are clean]. But this is the tricky question, and one that seems to have been kept off the environmental agenda very effectively: will we sacrifice the economic fetish of growth for the sake of the environment? Silence.
So, sorry I’m not out there spending my money so industries can be created in making stuff that's going to make the stuff that’s already been made make less of an environmental impact. I’ve got stuff; it’s been made; no need to make it again; I’ll mend it.
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