Mind you, I don't think I've ever watched a single episode of Bob The Builder. Children's TV just doesn't do it for me - apart from the Teletubbies in the late 1990s, but that was a cult thing. My last serious viewing of young children's TV was in the 1950s. You know, Muffin the Mule, Picture Book, The Woodentops, Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men (not forgetting the Little Weed, and the House that knew something about it). I might also count in slightly later stuff, like Torchy and Twizzle.
And then, as I grew older, there was Four Feather Falls, Supercar, Stingray, Fireball XL5, and Thunderbirds - but these ever more sophisticated series weren't aimed at very young children, but at youngsters getting interested in sci-fi technology, spy adventures, heroics and romantic love.
I don't know how such off-the-wall programmes as The Magic Roundabout fitted into the concept of 'children's TV', but then I was hardly watching when they got really popular. I was already much more into relatively 'grown-up' things like 77 Sunset Strip, Peyton Place, Poldark (the original series), and The Sweeney. I do recall sometimes watching The Monkees trying to be silly, slightly amusing and musical in the name of entertainment. And there was of course Top of the Pops and Monty Python's Flying Circus...
Anyway (wrenching her mind forward fifty years to 2020) what was I going to fix? A torn fly-screen in my caravan.
Why did it need fixing? It was fourteen years old, and the mesh tore when I brushed the nozzle of my vacuum cleaner against it.
Was it a big deal? Absolutely. A screen with any hole in it, even the tiniest, would let in irritating buzzing flies, and all kinds of gnat. It had to be fixed.
This is how I did it.
Here's the scene. A skylight with a fly-screen that hinges down for cleaning, and to access the skylight-opening handles.
First, I removed the mesh of the original fly-screen. It ripped away from the plastic frame with scarcely any effort. It had become pretty fragile.
I washed all the plastic bits. Then, back indoors, I cut out a new section of mesh from a net curtain off-cut I'd bought from my favourite fabric shop in Worthing during February. The off-cut had cost me only 99p. (Plenty left for more repairs like this!)
I applied UHU glue all round the plastic frame, and carefully pressed the edges of the net curtain cut-out onto the glue, tensioning it a little to make it taut. It co-operated. I hardly got any glue on my fingers.
Well, the result wasn't ultra-neat, certainly not as it came from the factory. But a pretty good effort for someone so unskilled. Job done!
I left it like that to dry overnight. It still looked fine next morning, so I swung the screen back up and clicked it into position.
I never in fact have this skylight open. I prefer to open the rear window, which has its own fly-screen, and/or the caravan door (fully or bottom half only) which also has its own door-sized fly-screen. But insects are cunning where hatches and skylights are concerned. They find the holes that are there for ventilation - caravans are full of discreet ventilation - and an inner screen is necessary to thwart them from gaining access to the caravan interior. I can't stand flies. Their buzzing drives me to distraction, and they all have to die if they find a way in. I take no prisoners.
There's another skylight in the bathroom, but it too is never opened, as I prefer to open the bathroom window/fly-screen instead.
The nozzle of the vacuum cleaner didn't damage the mesh of the bathroom skylight fly-screen, but I expect that at some point I'll need to repeat this repair on that. Such are the little jobs that constantly crop up on a caravan that's getting older. 2020 is its fourteenth full year.
