You've got to start somewhere [Dragonbone]

Well, here I go. My first Blog. It's a strange feeling, because I'm a very private person and I worry about putting stuff out there for posterity - once it's said it can't be taken back, etc etc. The hell with it - I'm old enough not to care any more.....

The idea of this, is that I seem to spend most of my time mending things, which I find very rewarding on several levels. When you have some artifact which isn't functioning in some way, many folk would simply dump it in the bin and buy another. But that's how all the ordinary stuff disappears - have you seen one of those pointy tin openers they used to pierce the Party Sevens? No, thought not. The Party Sevens disappeared and so did the tools - not that it matters much really, but a museum might think otherwise.

Then there's the economics. Mostly, what I mend is pretty worthless and costs more to mend than to buy a new one. But that's without considering the environmental cost, and the emotional value (toys, for example), and the personal satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. There's also, in my case, a pleasure to be had in seeing a machine working as well as it ever did, and often better. So that's why I mend.

Since I spend so much time doing it, I wondered if others might be interested in the work. I often get people marvelling in the ingenuity of a repair or seeing a way to fix their own stuff that they hadn't considered. People also say that most folk don't know how to fix things, and if I do, then maybe I ought to tell them. Not that I do anything special, but I do try to do it properly. Unfortunately I have a bit of Asperger somewhere in me, which leads to a tendency to talk to other people about my personal interests until the glazed look has turned into a murderous stare. Other people can apparently see this but it seems that I can't. I thought that maybe a blog would allow me to vent my desires without offending anyone who can't switch me off.

At the moment I'm working on a batch of broken hi-fi units, mostly cassette decks with soggy belts or other faults. I've also got a toy truck's towing hitch to finish, the fridge to sort out and a shed full of bikes, toys, electronics and other bric-a-brac which all need some kind of attention. I intend to post a snippet every so often about the progress, or otherwise, of these things. Then I can imagine the rest of the world gasping in astonishment, horror, mirth or pity. Actually I'm probably the only one who will ever read these little confessions so it matters not.

 So that's it for now. Next time I'll put some meat in the sandwich, so to speak, and who knows where it will go from there. By the way, the "dragonbone" in my username refers to a device I had once, purchased in Madison (Wisconsin, USA):

....which was basically an electronic dice (die?) which could be switched to have as many 'sides' as you needed. It was for use in Dungeons and Dragons and other like pursuits, games which often used odd-sized dice to decide who won a battle, or how many steps to move. This was before computer games got going. Anyway, it was fashioned to look like a bone with 'jewels' (LEDs) all the way along, and a bit at the end which you twisted to select the sided-ness - so if you selected 12 and pressed a stud, it would light up the LEDs to indicate a random number between 1 and 12. It seemed like a neat name for a neat gadget incorporating wizardry, mystery, oddity and dorkishness. Just like me.