Fred is reluctant to bin anything. When a skip is left outside a house in his street, Fred knocks on the door to ask if he can take anything useful. Once he found an old grandfather clock and succeeded in restoring it to working order.
His garage is full of bits and pieces. However there is a system of sorts. There is a rack of lengths of wood, a bin of assorted springs and jars of nails and screws. Fred is always on the lookout for brass screws as he says they are so costly to buy new. He sometimes sells on pieces of iron, copper and brass to passing street traders, who are themselves hoping to make something on the scrap value. Canny Fred has some old scales and strikes a hard bargain, based on the weight and ‘My knowledge of the current London trading price’.
Doris is Fred’s wife. She runs the household in a similar fashion. She was quite upset when the council started its recycling scheme and suggested jam jars should be placed in the blue box. Some of hers are thirty years old and have been filled with plum, strawberry and raspberry jam on an annual and seasonal basis. The soap in the kitchen always looks a bit odd until you realise it’s made of remnants of old bars that have been compressed together. Old clothes get recycled into dusters and cleaning cloths; Fred got rather embarrassed when he chose from the wrong pile and ended up his cleaning his car windscreen, in the Co-op car park, with a pair of Doris’s new knickers, which she, in the passenger seat recognised as a missing pair and leant out of the car window to tell him, to the amusement of onlookers.
Fred’s car is a ten year old Nissan. It has a slightly odd appearance as one of the headlights has been replaced with an old Citroen version. The mechanic at the MOT test centre looked dubiously at this arrangement but could find no rules against it. The rest of the car was given a very thorough check and the MOT certificate awarded, in what Fred regarded as being in a grudging fashion. The car kept attracting the attention of the police. That only ended, when on the third occasion Fred was able to fix the patrol car’s siren, with some wire and two crocodile clips. It was no surprise to Fred that the copper was in a bad mood, because, as he said, to Doris: ‘A police car without a siren is like a sergeant-major without a shout’.
Fred’s neighbours are generally tolerant and often ask for his help with minor problems of domestic engineering. When Mrs Jones lost her wedding ring down her kitchen sink drain, Fred retrieved it, with the aid of an old stirrup pump, some fishing hooks tied on to stiff wire and a mirror fixed to a walking stick. Quite a crowd came to watch and there was a round of applause when the ring finally appeared. Doris was there and made sure that Mrs Jones did not express her thanks to such an extent that others watching might feel that Fred himself was being recycled.
The house fire at number fourteen cemented Fred’s status as a local hero and recycling genius. The ladder he had made from discarded lengths of rope, together with a grappling iron fashioned out of wood and coat hooks and a window-breaking cast iron cobbler’s last were exactly what was needed to rescue the mother and her two young children. Fred was the star guest at the residents’ street party the following Saturday. There was much laughter when he said he had a good idea for re-using the champagne corks.
His garage is full of bits and pieces. However there is a system of sorts. There is a rack of lengths of wood, a bin of assorted springs and jars of nails and screws. Fred is always on the lookout for brass screws as he says they are so costly to buy new. He sometimes sells on pieces of iron, copper and brass to passing street traders, who are themselves hoping to make something on the scrap value. Canny Fred has some old scales and strikes a hard bargain, based on the weight and ‘My knowledge of the current London trading price’.
Doris is Fred’s wife. She runs the household in a similar fashion. She was quite upset when the council started its recycling scheme and suggested jam jars should be placed in the blue box. Some of hers are thirty years old and have been filled with plum, strawberry and raspberry jam on an annual and seasonal basis. The soap in the kitchen always looks a bit odd until you realise it’s made of remnants of old bars that have been compressed together. Old clothes get recycled into dusters and cleaning cloths; Fred got rather embarrassed when he chose from the wrong pile and ended up his cleaning his car windscreen, in the Co-op car park, with a pair of Doris’s new knickers, which she, in the passenger seat recognised as a missing pair and leant out of the car window to tell him, to the amusement of onlookers.
Fred’s car is a ten year old Nissan. It has a slightly odd appearance as one of the headlights has been replaced with an old Citroen version. The mechanic at the MOT test centre looked dubiously at this arrangement but could find no rules against it. The rest of the car was given a very thorough check and the MOT certificate awarded, in what Fred regarded as being in a grudging fashion. The car kept attracting the attention of the police. That only ended, when on the third occasion Fred was able to fix the patrol car’s siren, with some wire and two crocodile clips. It was no surprise to Fred that the copper was in a bad mood, because, as he said, to Doris: ‘A police car without a siren is like a sergeant-major without a shout’.
Fred’s neighbours are generally tolerant and often ask for his help with minor problems of domestic engineering. When Mrs Jones lost her wedding ring down her kitchen sink drain, Fred retrieved it, with the aid of an old stirrup pump, some fishing hooks tied on to stiff wire and a mirror fixed to a walking stick. Quite a crowd came to watch and there was a round of applause when the ring finally appeared. Doris was there and made sure that Mrs Jones did not express her thanks to such an extent that others watching might feel that Fred himself was being recycled.
The house fire at number fourteen cemented Fred’s status as a local hero and recycling genius. The ladder he had made from discarded lengths of rope, together with a grappling iron fashioned out of wood and coat hooks and a window-breaking cast iron cobbler’s last were exactly what was needed to rescue the mother and her two young children. Fred was the star guest at the residents’ street party the following Saturday. There was much laughter when he said he had a good idea for re-using the champagne corks.