Just don't tell my mother....

Any number of posts could start this way. This one does because if my mother knew that our buggy was in danger of collapsing she would suffer sleepless nights because of the worry, which in turn would generate endless suggestions as to what we should to do rectify the situation. And, since I am a 37 year old mother of two, I feel qualified to fix the buggy off my own bat. Which is what I did. Eventually. And in a rather roundabout way.

It started collapsing several weeks ago (pleeeeeeease don't tell her I've been wheeling Emsy around in a potential death trap, it'd be more than she could handle). And it's not been a death trap as such, it was just that a screw which was pivotal to the structural soundness of the buggy had lost its nut and kept falling out - in other words, in common with the rest of the family, our buggy had a screw loose. I kept screwing it back in but, since the nut had disappeared, it was never long before it worked its way out again.

So, today Emsy and I visited four (4!!!!) hardware stores in order to try to get a replacement screw which was a bit longer than the one which kept falling out since it didn't seem possible to get a nut to reattach since it's only just long enough as it is. It turned out that what was impossible was to get a longer screw of the same width. In the last shop a kindly man took pity on me and gave me, gratis and for nothing, three free nuts, which I took home and still couldn't manage to attach to the screw. So, I did what anyone would have done in this situation - took a hammer to it. No, not really, I actually took it round to my retired neighbour who I know is good at DIY, and he worked on it for about half an hour and finally managed to screw the nut into position.

I thanked him in person, and will drop a little something round as well, but also wanted to thank him in cyberspace - THANK YOU DENNIS! For potentially saving my child's life, and my own sanity!