With Snail and I

Fjordie

Aristophanes told a good story. Well, Plato made him. The former claimed that the gods, being angry about something (as per usual), decided quite literally to split humans in two, to make them sorry and afraid (the way all gods work in fact). At the time, your average human was a hybrid male and female, with four of everything we now have two of. Knitting jumpers was a challenge but you were never alone and you could always see where you had been as well as where you were going, simultaneously.

Once split, humans would forever be searching for their other half. Ha ha ha said Zeus, or Apollo or whoever, before nipping off to be a white bull for the evening.

Now, my Dad told me that story and no one made him. I was five years old at the time and expecting Thomas the Tank Engine, but hey, you can’t have everything you want. Sometimes, as a wise man once said, if you try hard you can get what you need* though.

Sometimes, if you are really lucky, you meet up with your other half as in the Aristophanes tale, and actually recognise them as such. Or slowly come to realise that they are the other bit of the jigsaw. Admittedly, a bit of a rubbish jigsaw in that it only has two pieces (and one of them is a nondescript colour that doesn’t seem to go anywhere). Lose one of them under the sofa or let it be chewed by a dog and you can pretty much write the thing off and take it to the charity shop.

I was really, really lucky.

No, really REALLY lucky.

Thank you Snailofhappiness for twenty years of being a complete jigsaw. Please don’t lose me under the sofa or let me be chewed by a dog.

♥♥♥

* That wise man being Dr Gregory House (or possibly Mick Jagger)

Saving Kelly Kettle: Probably the dullest set of pictures in the world

DIY KK Fixing Kit*

As regular sufferers of my blog will know, when I am not writing / working in the big city** / complaining in a sustainable way / flying my tiny quadcopter*** I am DIYing, with all the attendant enthusiasm of an educated fish with an umbrella.****

BUT… sometimes, the DIY works OK. Remember our Kelly Kettle (KK)? When it sprung a leak, I, Mr Snail, fixed it with little (if any) swearing, calling on supernatural forces or swearing on supernatural forces. Indeed, the Snail herself marked this rare occasion and wrote about it (here).

Well, as with all things and DIY in particular, Chaos eventually imposes its will and, yesterday, after filling the Kelly Kettle and discovering my sock was wet, I concluded that either the prospect of setting light to some old newspaper really WAS that exciting or the KK was leaking again. And it was:

The Offending Rivet

Hmm… pretty sure that shouldn’t be there

Fortunately, we still had the food grade sealant from a year and a quarter ago and so, barely fifteen minutes elapsed before the KK was repaired – again. I have to wait 24 hours for the sealant to cure but have just tested to see if the hole is plugged, and it is. Did I breathe a sigh of relief? You better believe it!

Ready to rumble, er, boil

Satisfying sustainability –  a good way to start 2015!

oOo

* OK, the sealant is for sealing, the yellow-handled tool is for digging into the sealant at the top of the tube that has, well, sealed and the Nylabone is to push the tube up to get the sealant out because I can’t be bothered to find the frame-thing you are supposed to use.

** Big town, in fact.

*** Crashing my tiny quadcopter, in fact.

**** Hilaire Belloc wrote: The learned fish has not sufficient brains / to go into water when it rains.