> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Fixing things with strangers on Saturday mornings - URL: https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/fixing-things-with-strangers-on-saturday-mornings/ - Published: 2025-07-13T07:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2025-07-13T07:30:00.000Z - Description: A church hall, long tables, cups of tea and broken things. The best three hours of my month. - Author: Ruth Abara - Tags: Mending, Slow work, #evergreen, #Import 2026-10-02 18:03 On the second Saturday of every month, a church hall in our part of Leeds turns into a repair café. People bring broken things: toasters, lamps, jumpers, bicycles, a radio from 1962\. Volunteers sit at long tables with their tools, and together they try to fix them. I have been going for a year, first with broken things, now as a volunteer. It is the best morning of the month. ## How it works You arrive with your broken thing and sign in at the door. Someone makes you tea. Then you sit down next to a volunteer who knows about that kind of thing, and the two of you fix it together. That last part is the important one: you are not leaving it at a shop. You are learning how it works and how it broke. ((The first rule of the café is written on a board by the door: "We fix with you, not for you." Nobody is allowed to just take a thing away and hand it back.)) ![The tools come out at ten. My first repair, a desk lamp with a loose wire, needed one screwdriver and one very patient volunteer.](https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/rep-lamp.jpg) The tools come out at ten. My first repair, a desk lamp with a loose wire, needed one screwdriver and one very patient volunteer. ## The people The volunteers are the heart of it. There is Malcolm, a retired electrician, who can fix almost anything with a plug. There is Joy, who sews and knits and once mended a teddy bear so well its owner cried. There is Ahmed, who does bicycles, and Bev, who does computers, and a quiet teenager called Sam who is better at phones than any of us. None of them are paid. All of them say the same thing when I ask why they come: it is the best feeling there is to watch someone's face when a thing they loved starts working again. ## What gets fixed Roughly two out of three things leave working. The most common problems are boring and simple: a loose wire, a blown fuse, a broken switch, a seam that came undone. The things that cannot be fixed are often the newest ones, glued shut so that nobody can open them. ![Joy's sewing table, where the jumpers, the curtains and the occasional teddy bear end up.](https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/rep-sew.jpg) Joy's sewing table, where the jumpers, the curtains and the occasional teddy bear end up. > Most broken things are not broken. They are just waiting for someone to open them. ## What I learned - How to open things carefully, and how to put them back together. - That a fuse costs less than a coffee and fixes a surprising number of toasters. - That patience matters more than skill. The volunteers are rarely faster than you; they are calmer. - That a community can form around anything, even a broken kettle. 🔧 Look for a repair café near you before you throw anything away. Most towns have one now, and you do not need to be good with tools. ## Becoming a volunteer After six months of bringing things, Malcolm asked me to help at the sewing table. I said I could only sew a button. "Then you can teach people to sew a button," he said. That is now my job: buttons, hems and the occasional zip. It is not glamorous. It is enormously satisfying, and it makes the hours between ten and one go faster than any other three hours of my month. #### Is it really free? Yes. There is a jar for donations, which pays for tea and spare parts. #### What if my thing can't be fixed? You still learn why, and you leave with advice on what to look for next time.