The workman cometh

Fixing our bed is a bonding experience. Unfortunately the bed itself is lacking certain elements in the way of bonding, but “fixing the bed” has resulted in a succession of people from church making their way to our house. We have got through gallons of juice, coke, coffee, “mate” (indescribable Argentinian herbal infusion), and bucket loads of biscuits all in the name of “fixing the bed”.
On Sunday afternoon Josecito, wife Silvia, and two of their kids came round. He started the job, but unfortunately he didn’t have any tools. It is possible to do quite a lot with a bit of wire in Argentina, but fixing the bed proved to be beyond the limit. Josecito works three hours out of town in the week, and when he left, he managed to take some of the bolts from the bed with him.

On Wednesday morning, Ana and Chiquito came round with a bag of tools. But they weren’t fixing the bed, they were just leaving the tools for someone else to come later. But Josecito had taken the bolts from the bed, and he’s not back in town till Saturday. So I had to go and buy some new bolts ready for when Oscar came round to fix the bed.

On Wednesday evening Oscar came round. He drilled some holes, and chiseled out some grooves, and prepared all the pieces. When we tried to put it together, the middle bit, i.e the base, dropped out through the side pieces, limiting its usefulness as a means of suspending the mattress. So we took it all apart again, and left it against the wall so that he could come back tomorrow.

On Thursday evening, Oscar came round again. He drilled some more holes, and put a patch over one of the bits that he’d chiseled out yesterday, and fitted some dowling plugs between some of the pieces. And then it went together. It’s a little precarious, he has promised he’ll come back and re-inforce a couple of the slats, but we did sleep on it without incident last night.

On Saturday and on Sunday, they do no work at all,
So it was on a Monday morning that the gas-man came to call.

We haven’t dared tell anyone that the cold tap in the kitchen has stopped working…

And of course, if we weren’t such English plebs, we would just roll our sleeves up and get on with applying a bit of wire like everyone else.

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