Interegnum

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Little wheel spinning. Spinning. Spinning.

Stuff happening deep in the gubbings.

I learned more about 'gubbings' in recent weeks than I had previously collated in a lifetime.

Days here start about 6am. I try to throw in 20 minutes of yoga but often not in the right frame of mind so make myself sit on the porch and shell nuts 'mindfully'  (be calm, focus on digging that white bit out of splintered shell....) while the household shakes off the night, slurks its first coffee, rummages around making breakfast and gives empty (ish) yoghurt pots to the k9s. They carry them about like a prize; sit at my feet endeavouring to extract last morsels as the sunlight escapes the tops of the trees and warms us up.

Mornings have been cold.

Bro heads off to the workshop between 0715 and 0730. To begin with I followed him until my days segued into a short morning session of encouraging/assisting/motivating my niece to address the hell that is her end of the house. A bomb went off in a clothing warehouse.... Every time she can't stand it she just moves into another bedroom. I suspect some mental health lows. Avoidance.  I'm removed enough to be able to suggest we tackle it in 5-10 minutes per day. When it's coming from her parents, hackles go up, heels dig in, stress levels escalate, she buries herself in scrolling.

Progress has been made. Another week or possibly two might see the visible part of the problem off.  The underlying issues have root in various disadvantages she was born with. Her cheerfulness masks a lot of pain.

By 0815 she is on her way to work and I have moved to my bike repair station (verandah of the old office). After the demise of all the unrepairable bikes, I have had to sort and store all the recovered parts (particularly inner tubes -180 bikes out meant the best part of 350 inner tubes. A few went in the bin with worn and perished tyres.) 

40 bikes have been renovated, and lined up on the verandah; 90% are womens and childrens bikes. 40 or so more mens bikes escaped the wrecking spree but we have no demand for them and I am working up projects to move them to other parts of the community. (Racing and road bikes are going to Tinwald Cycling Club. Mens Shed renovates bikes for charitable distribution. St Vincent de Paul is interested in having some for less well financially endowed families in their congregation.)

The Claw visited.

Progress on bikes slowed considerably about two weeks in. (At this point I should perhaps mention that the workshops here are in sections, adjoining sheds, but each with distinctive allocation of tools and resources. The metal shop has all the uber-heavy stuff - lathes, bending, folding, drilling, plasma cutting, welding, grinding, the forge etc. Way above my pay grade all of it. I was allowed to use a polishing wheel the other day to get rust off some chrome! Big eyebrow raise. Next door is the automotive stuff (more heavy machines that don't fit in the metal shop, along with panelbeating stuff, machines for tyres, balancing wheels, lifting cars.... and cars and car bodies for England.) I was directed thereto, provided with some hightech heat gun and special scraper, and advised to get all the vinyl signwriting off 'that' van.

(Completing the tour - there is a woodworking workshop, a paint/flammables storeroom and a huge sewing room equipped with machines for upholstering; relevant later in this story.)

Back to that van.  Best described as a metal box on 4 wheels. A panelbeater was doing a mate's job on repairs to rusted steel around the windscreen.  It had no windscreen, no dashboard, no seats, no fittings of any kind in fact. All the 'gubbings' were all thrown randomly into boxes in the back. It was covered (inside and out) in dust and birdshit.

Signwriting removed, reassembly began with windscreen wiper mounts.

Random selection of gubbings.

Ok it still had a steering wheel; a metal box with 5 wheels, and signwriting from end to end. Remarkably the top of the back window says ' BIKE REPAIRS' so I left that bit. It seemed pertinent and wasn't in the way of any planned paint application.

More tomorrow...