I’ve learnt over many years to trust my gut when it comes to what to do . Yesterday I received the December edition of the Mendip Times and chanced to spot the calendar note about a Wells Repair Cafe meeting. We were planning to go to the Timsbury Festive Village Market the same morning so how could we fit both in.
When I don’t know why I need to go somewhere but get an urge I always follow the urge and bypass the left brain. I found out why I had to go when I was there. We jumped into the car about 9:45 and arrived shortly after 10 at the Church of Saint Thomas’s Church in Wells.
The first thing that’s struck me was the atmosphere which was welcoming, and busy without being corporate. As I opened the door, ahead of me was a comforting table of biscuits and home made cakes. I helped myself to a coffee and a piece of apple crumble for which only a donation was required . The server said that they get more money asking for donations than by making a fixed price.
a light and pleasant church hall in Wells
She said that very often people just come for the coffee and cakes, in other words a bit of company on a Saturday morning . Well done.
As I saw from the advert and also read on Facebook, Amanda is the leading light whose enthusiasm and positivity keeps everything going .
Anyone can bring along non-working equipment and they get a number and are called when someone is free.Â
The Repair Café idea began in Amsterdam back in 2009, thanks to a Dutch journalist, Martine Postma, who wondered why people were throwing away perfectly fixable things. Two years later, in 2011, she set up the Repair Café Foundation, and suddenly communities all over the world had the encouragement — and the toolkit — to start their own pop-up fixing sessions.
The UK was a little slow to get going, but once the idea arrived, it spread quickly. One turning point was in 2017 in Bath, when someone with a broken kettle realised there wasn’t a single place in the city willing to mend it. So she gathered a few friends, set up some tables, and simply started repairing things. That small act lit a spark.
Between 2019 and 2020, the number of UK repair cafés actually doubled, as more people became fed up with throwing things away and wanted to revive older habits of mending and making do. Since then, the movement has grown into a nationwide network — friendly groups of volunteers saving items from landfill, swapping knowledge, and building community in the process. Today, repair cafés have become a hopeful little antidote to our throwaway culture. And all of it started with one broken kettle.
The motley crew assembled – sightly out of date but you get the idea. 🙂
For anyone interested in starting or joining a Repair Café, the official international foundation has an excellent website with guides and resources: https://www.repaircafe.org
lets all enjoy tea and cake
This local activity is well publicised in the local Facebook Group. Â
“Bring your broken items to our friendly community group and our wonderful volunteer repairers will do their very best to fix them! You might even learn some mending skills yourself in the process. Drinks and delicious homemade cakes are available when we’re at St Thomas’s.Everyone is very welcome. Our aim is to help save waste (especially landfill), save people money and save the planet. Wells Repair Café happens on the last Saturday of the month, always 10:00 till 12:30″ but check the sustainableWells.org.uk website.
With coffee in hand I sat down at the nearest available seat to be greeted by a lady by the name of Melanie. We chatted away and I discovered that she had written a book based on the theme of a Father and Son, all 160,000 words of it.
My professional side immediately snapped in and I asked what the strap line would be about. I said that the title itself was not sufficient to sell the book. I told about KDP Kindle Direct Publishing and said how easy it was.
She said she knew of someone in York who knew of a publishing house. I responded that that would involve allocating a lot of money which maybe you don’t need to spend. I said it used to be called Vanity publishing but now the use of the term has diminished somewhat.
Anyway I’m quite used to offering advice to people who don’t really want it or are not ready to receive it so I gave her my card and said that if she wanted help, I would be very happy to give it.
It reminds me of a case a few months ago where three mothers who had lost their children came to me for advice on how to publish a book but one of them suddenly decided that they didn’t need my help and without asking the other two she decided they would not be using my services. This caused the meeting to close abruptly. This was after their eight years of messing around deciding whether to do something so frankly I don’t have much patience with this.
Anyway, back to Melanie. She did not think the book would sell due to the absence of bad language, sex and violence. She had this firmly fixed in her mind so I don’t know where this will lead us. Anyway my offer was on the table. I expect nothing; I have done my duty of care informing that I will assist if she should require it. It is called ‘divine indifference’. This is in itself an interesting term.
Divine indifference is an old spiritual idea that simply means staying calm and centred no matter what’s going on around you. It’s not about being cold or not caring — quite the opposite. It’s the ability to care deeply without being dragged up and down by every drama, emotion, or opinion that comes your way. A kind of inner steadiness. The world does what it does, but you keep your balance.Â
Francoise and I left after about an hour feeling how good it was that hubs of such friendly nature exist and keep the wheels of community turning.
