Repair rather than replace will save us in the long run

Back in the time when one television in a house was the lap of luxury and not necessarily a given, one of the most valuable resources in the area was the TV repair man – because he could breathe new life into the old tube with some sort of technical magic.

Then the cost of tellys came down, the depth went from several feet to six inches, and the quality of picture went up – which meant that we wanted new all the time and we happily shipped our old sets off to the electronic abattoir.

But when did we so completely stop repairing things that such a skill became so unique it warranted a television show in its own right?

The Repair Shop is an of those beautifully made BBC programmes, where people – normally very old people – turn up with items from their youth and ask a team of supremely talented craftspeople to bring them back to life.

Sometimes they’re big jobs like massive Grandfather Clocks that haven’t ticked or chimed in decades, or stereo systems that don’t turn or tune – and sometimes it’s just a rusty old toy that still holds magical memories within the folds of its cracked paint.

There’s a whole strand where people bring in things that, for example, soldiers fashioned in the trenches during the Second World War – leather bags, wallets, things from wood – or their grandchildren want to sympathetically restore a helmet without taking the bullet dent out of the top of it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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