When things go wrong

Some people seem quite blasé about things going wrong. They either fix them there and then, get somebody else to do it or just brush the whole thing to one side. I’m not like that.

I don’t mean I get all uptight when things go wrong, but I don’t like that interim situation when things that ought to be fixed are, for whatever reason, not fixed.

In that respect I’m not remotely political – I don’t fix things simply by describing them as fixed or by treating a stated intention to fix a problem as equivalent to fixing it. Either something is fixed or it isn’t.

I don’t mean I live an existence of clockwork regularity and machine like humming precision either. Nothing like it. I’m pretty clumsy, a breaker of cups, saucers and glasses. Only yesterday I broke a decades old Denby coffee cup, but as that can’t be fixed, it isn’t something that concerns me unduly. Just as well really – considering my breakage record.

I dropped my laptop mouse onto a slate floor yesterday, but yet again it survived. It’s a Logitech optical mouse and when I do finally manage to break it, I’ll buy another because they must be amazingly well made.

Clumsy is what I am, arising as it does from an excessive head in clouds tendency which you may have glimpsed from time to time. Toes regularly stubbed on the leg of the bed, spectacles knocked off by a stray arm, Themos flask covered in dents – that’s me. Why I risk chopping logs I don’t know.

Anyhow – back to fixing things or not fixing them. With me, the niggle is more to do with things that aren’t right but could easily be put right. The dripping tap, the moss on the drive, our EU membership – simple stuff like that.

It niggles.

I could never be a politician. Obvious problems with obvious solutions stay unfixed for decades. The EU is a good example. Some aspects of the EU such as free trade and competition policy are desirable, but that was what the EEC was supposed to be all about.

So we could easily fix the EU by going back to an EEC. Unravel the single currency, sack truckloads of bureaucrats and repeal a few skiploads of law. Tedious but do-able. But vested interests have their fat legs under the table, politicians have their fat heads up their own arses, so the fix never happens.

It niggles.