Mr Fix It

Had an online chat with a friend last night while she was sorting through files on her computer, giving it a bit of a tidy up. It went something like:

Me – “Tea accidentally bought a new computer today.”

R – “How do you accidentally buy a computer?”

“She put in a bid online and completely didn’t think she’d get it. Forgot about it, got it, owns it.”

“That’s funny. Is it a good one?”

“Sounds like it. Apparently it has lots of Rams and heaps of gigathings and a whole bunch of mega doodad wotsits.”

“Wow. That’s cool. Hey – what are DAT Files? They’re in Temp folders. They can’t be very important can they?”

“You’re asking someone who just said their computer has mega doodad wotsits?”

“It sounded like a fair enough description to me.”

“DAT files. Hmm. I dunno. Why don’t you nuke one and see what happens?”

“Can’t. Just tried that and the computer won’t let me. It says that I am using it.”


Not only am I clueless as to the workings of computers, but cars baffle me as well. Recently one of the tyres on the car got flat. I’ve never seen such a flat tyre before – last time we had a flat I just relied on one of those cans that pump the tyre up. They’re amazing. They patch up the hole and everything... like magic in a can. But that was a slow leak, this was a big one, so the tyre had to be changed, and I realised this was the first time in my life I had ever changed a tyre. It was great fun. I felt so mechanicky with dirt on my hands and making metal hit metal and perspiration forming on my grease-streaked brow, the smell of rubber filling my flared nostrils... I really wanted someone I knew to walk past and see me on my knees working on the car so they would think “Gee, look at Quick with his sleeves rolled up, hard at work on the car. He's a real Renaissance man.”

The bolts were fuckers to loosen, so Tea went upstairs for the hammer and came back with a shifter because the hammer wasn’t in the hammer place. The shifter was way too light (obviously) so I went upstairs to confirm that the hammer was not in the hammer place, and I went back downstairs armed with one of my arm-curl weights. Tea had three of the bolts loose by that time. She had jumped up and down on the lever, which I didn’t think was a very professional way of doing it. I made her stand back while I got stuck into the lever with the weight. I hit it repeatedly until my shoulder started to feel strange. No go. So Tea jumped up and down on the lever again and loosened the remaining bolts.

When we had finished and the new tyre was in place, I said to Tea in my best Barry The Mechanic voice, “Well that was bloody beaut. I was thinking about changing the oil tomorrow and maybe checking out the carbie.”

She laughed at this because we both know that I would not know what a carburetor was if I found one in my underpants and it had the word ‘carburetor’ written in glow in the dark letters on it.