One Person's trash is another's treasure.

As hard as it might be to believe this is the vacuum collected from the street parade.

Brisvegas it seems has a road-side collection of crap more often than you'd think is strictly necessary except that they also charge people to take their stuff to the ol' humpity bump, so I guess people just pile up their unwanted bits and pieces and wait for the notice through the post box that invites 'em to drag it all out of the dump-corner and onto the streets.

Some of these piles are so big that I am tempted to think that without the crap, people might well have spare rooms to rent out.

It is a festive time for fosicking. People mooch along and have a good nosey as they go, or they appoint spotters if they are driving.

My girl loves this time of year.

She spied 2 vacuum cleaners and dragged 'em home, only to discover they had both been raped of their power lead. BUGGER! Seems the copper in the cords might be of value. She popped 'em back out onto her pile. I suggested that Steve might be able to put in a new cord so we picked the best of the 2 and brought it back to the big house.

Steve pulled it apart. It was quite a learning experience and he could possible now be a qualified vacuum repair person. There is quite a lot of kit inside one of these machines.

We trooped off to Masters to get a replacement cord - $6 - pretty cheap for a new or newish vacuum. Yippee!

Some hours later after I ahd been in and out in and out, I was there for the final switching on. It worked. It did not sound good, infact it sounded poorly. Then there was a smell and some smoke and the smoke thickened. I panicked and pulled out the cord. The smell was strong. Yep I decided it was fucked. But Steve wanted to see what was smoking, and as he had worked out a quick way into it he pulled it apart again and turned it on. I was told if it caught fire not to throw water onto it - electrical advice and to try and smother it with a blanket. I was not best pleased to the 'elf and safety officer.

Yeh you guessed it, it burst into smoke again and this time he admitted defeat.

I wondered if it was possible to suggest to the council that they provide a couple of stickers, saying 'This is fucked' 'This is fixable' 'This is perfectly good I just don't want it anymore' That way people who want to nick the cords might leave well alone the things that are still in working order and time might not be wasted trying to fix that which is truly buggered.

As it was a toss up between playing with the electrics or gardening, Steve was not unhappy with his afternoon. He'd rather do just about anything than be on the dumb end of the ruler in the garden with me.