Getting things done

I walked to town on a mission to get Karleen’s gold chain fixed, and tried two jewellers: “Do you do repairs?” They consulted their price lists. The first said £15. The second said between £12 and £15. “The chain cost £14 new,” I explained. They shrugged. I could have tried a Pakistani jeweller. He might have grunted and squinted and fixed it on the spot before mentioning the price. They don’t turn away custom, and they know how to do deals, unlike those ethnic English who follow the rulebooks of a Head Office far away. But the Pakistani jewellers were places of oriental mystery: arcane symbols and dowries and weddings, everything 24-carat gold. I dared not venture into that territory.

So I set out in search of cheap tools to do the repair myself. On the way I dropped into Oxfam to browse their second-hand books. The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief was founded in 1942, and in England we tend to forget the connection between these local charity shops and the work that Oxfam does worldwide. A middle-aged lady was patiently instructing a young African woman in how to put novels on a shelf alphabetically by author. I felt almost indignant on behalf of the shy African, whose inability to work fluently with the alphabet was as little her fault as the quite startling beauty with which she had been endowed by her Creator. Back in the street, a senior traffic warden was instructing a junior one in the intricate details of their craft or trade – penalising motorists for illegal parking. Thus it had been in the motor workshop in the morning, too: the boss helping the mechanic in the tricky business of opening a locked car bonnet from underneath, with the aid of bent crowbars. Now I was able to read the faces of the old men in town. They had spent their lives instructing or being instructed. Every job, even emptying the refuse bins, has its own lore, its special art, to be passed down from one to another. Survival skills, rather than philosophy or ethics, are what makes the world go round, as I hinted yesterday.

In the end I found a pair of “mini needle nose pliers” at Isaac Lord. “Isaac Lord Limited is a family run firm, which was started in Desborough Road, High Wycombe, England in the year 1892. Isaac and his family sold tools and supplies to the workers in the furniture factories on their way to and from work.” Its staff have an expertise and helpfulness rare these days. They still specialise in woodworking tools and remain on the same premises in unbroken continuity.

I repaired the gold chain without too much difficulty and feel pleased that England still has traditional shopkeepers who have not been driven out of business by the faceless chain stores, nor the enterprising immigrants. Town traders show us armchair philosophers what life is about.