Repair

Friday Fragment #38

Earlier, as the storm had brought gust and gale and pushed rain against the glass, I had become lost in thought, following water droplets on their slide towards the base of the window, and watching skies burn grey with edges of blue. Several loud knocks from behind pulled me away from this one or two minutes of silvered reverie. At the door stood my plumber, his sudden unexpected appearance extraordinary because I had been meaning for so long to make contact with him: for all of the last month, perhaps two, of watching my boiler falter and drip water and leak pressure. I had been putting off the call that would trigger its repair or replacement: an expenditure I couldn’t afford. ‘I was in the area, thought I’d say hello’, and he followed me through the house, into the kitchen, because that is the only room that could make sense of his visit. He winked, half-smiled and told me to fix him ‘his usual’. He loves his coffee. I explained the strange coincidence of his unannounced arrival, confessing to the half-litre bowl of filthy water sitting in the cupboard at the base of the boiler. He unclipped the cover above, found the source of the leak and confirmed a quick and affordable fix. A simple valve – no more than ten minutes’ work to replace. He would order the part and said he would then delay invoicing for a couple of months, aware that it was not always easy for a young man with a wife and family to quickly find money for such things. He drank his coffee. He began to tell me about his friend who had recently died. The rain had stopped, but his eyes became wet and his voice started to crack. He continued, only just, to tell me about another friend, isolated in his care home, who he’d visited on his birthday, only to share a solitary wave through a glass door. Several more friends had left him these last twelve months. Cancer had taken one. Covid had disabled another. And his beloved dog, just last week, became the latest and most difficult of those losses to bear. Here, he really struggled to hold back his tears, and, though I don’t think he noticed, I failed once, maybe twice, to do the same. He remarked on how incredibly difficult and wearying the last year had been. He quietly placed his mug into the sink, asked me to give Charlotte his best and told me he’d be back on Monday to fit the new valve. A day of such loud and violent weather, with all of life’s loss and litter thrown and tossed around. One quiet man and another sharing coffee and company, sharing the rain, the rusty water, a tear or two. Things in need of repair.¹

‘Friday Fragment’ is an additional weekly instalment to my A Thousand Fragments monthly newsletter.

1. The last few weeks have been more busy than I’ve been able to comfortably control. Last Friday’s fragment therefore arrives with you today, Wednesday. A confession: this isn’t new writing, but a piece I first published, on social media, in February of 2022. It felt timely to share again, with a mostly new audience, on the back of a few weeks of storm weather that have battered and flooded parts of the small town in which I live. It’s also the ‘fragment’ of my life that chiefly inspired me to start to share on this platform. It would take quite a few more months before I was ready to launch A Thousand Fragments with this first post.