Breaking things

 

It came yesterday, borrowed from a relative, and stirred up old forgotten memories.

Of struggling to thread up a pedal singer sewing machine in primary school. 

Those days of being taught knitting and sewing at school have long passed. 

In my day, we spent hours and hours knitting cushion covers or sewing pin cushions. 

I was the class expert in breaking the needles in the sewing machine, 

and our teacher hated my unnatural skill. 

Even my knitting was hit-and-miss. 

It seemed to become tighter and tighter until I was strangling wool and needles. 

My sewing was so bad on the machine that when I did get it going, 

I refused to change the bobbin and thread and did everything with the one colour. Delighted to paddle and zoom in freedom.

At such moments I would have loved to have never-ending curtains of material to feed through the capricious machine. 

Instead, always someone else was waiting to use the machine behind me.

When the needle broke as usual I could hear their despair

I quickly left them to the disaster

Machines are capricious things like people.

Usually broken by others.

There was a flow chart in our engineering department on how to deal with a broken machine.  It always made me laugh.