It was the week that everything went wrong at Lush Places. I say everything – actually, it was only three things. First, there was the flat tyre. Then the computer printer ground to a halt. Finally, there was the apparently irreparable damage to our much-loved quilt cover.
I wasn’t surprised by any of this: any fool with a head full of clichés and a heart full of superstitions knows that, like the Stooges, the Musketeers and the Brontë sisters, bad luck comes in threes. The big question was whether good luck comes in threes, too, and that all three would be repairable at a reasonable cost.
This is not guaranteed. As I wrote in a Listener feature on the subject a couple of years back, lack of options for repair, not to mention cut-price replacement costs, mean even those in the city are often left with no option but to toss out the broken thing and buy a new one. It’s even more problematic out here in the provinces.
A tyre repair should be a gimme. As someone who spent years working part-time at gas stations, I know that as long as the sidewall isn’t damaged, most punctures can be repaired. So I took off the tyre, which would cost around $300 to replace, put on the spare, and drove around Masterton until I found a place that could fix the thing in an hour. This cost me a surprisingly steep $43, which seemed even more excessive given I had to put the tyre back on myself. Still, repair No 1 was a success.
The good fortune continued with the quilt cover. Though the woman at the dry-cleaning agency who pointed out the tear said it wasn’t repairable, it was easily fixed. I found someone to mend it for as little as $15 – half what it costs to dry-clean it and much less than the $550 it would have cost to replace it.
That left the printer. As anyone who has ever owned one knows, they are the greatest hornswoggle in the history of the world. The manufacturers suck you in by selling the hardware cheap and then swindle you by pricing their proprietary ink cartridges as if they’re gold bars. But I have now discovered they have another way to milk you like a reluctant ewe – an error message reading “ink absorber pad full”.
No, I had no idea what it was, either. An online search revealed it soaks up the excess ink used during the cleaning the printer nozzles are always needing. At some point, and without prior warning, this pad has to be replaced, something you cannot do yourself: it must be completed by an “authorised” repairer.
I rang the local guy. Yes, he could replace the pad in our four-year-old printer, but it would set me back an eye-watering $300 to do so. Meanwhile, a brand-new replacement would cost just $230.
“Annoying, isn’t it?” he said. “Yes,” I said, and rang off, before driving into town to buy the new one.
Unlike bad luck, good luck apparently comes only in twos. Like the fingers, I would like to give the rich, corporate robbers who make computer printers.
This year, it happened at 9.13am on March 29. Last year, it was on April 9.
I’m not sure whether the lighting of the first fire of the year is an event to be celebrated or not. But, like the equinoxes, it marks a before-and-after moment, this one created by a violent, two-day storm that rolled across Lush Places, shredding leaves, breaking branches and plunging temperatures well below 10°C.
Sitting over our one electric heater, it was decided by popular vote to set the first fire and light it. The cat, a hedonist of the old school, immediately set up home in front of the wood burner and moved from her spot only for her (many) meal breaks.
Still, I felt there was something precipitate about it as I struck the first match of the year. I think that’s because, though I’ve been at it 15 hours so far, I still haven’t managed to bring in all this winter’s firewood. Sigh.
