June 2013 – Brighton Repair Café

We were really fortunate to have a gloriously sunny day when we took our tables, chairs and tools out into the streets of Hanover for the Street Mendathon.

The First thing to be repaired (or at least assessed for which parts were missing) was my old Singer sewing machine. As Tom worked out how it functioned a passing neighbour mentioned she had a Singer sewing machine that she was hoping to get rid of. So off she went to get it and brought back a near identical model which can now be used to repair my Singer!

With the ingenious use of a bit of blu-tac to hold it steady Izzie managed to repair a ring which had become detached using Araldite.

Tom showed Kate how to Darn her slippers on a doorstep

Then whilst Mattia started to show me how to fix my broken lamp, D replaced a broken string and tuned a Kora.

After cleaning up some of the points and a bit of re-wiring and tightening of connections…

the electrical parts were in working order but the missing glass top still needed replacing…

So the Belisha Beacon found left out in the street a few weeks before was carved down…

Until it fit snuggly atop the lamp where it looks like it was designed to be!

There was no rest for Mattia, he went on to help Sam fix her reading lamp

and Andi with her coffee machine that had taken to dripping coffee at a torturously slow rate

All this whilst knees were patched

bag seams were fixed

Zips were repaired

and pockets were mended

Whilst down the road there was another hive of activity where the SpacePlace Repair Café were set up with their radical repairers…