Repair Cafe is four years old!
The Repair Cafe that runs in All Saints Church on the second Saturday of every month, is four years old!
You may think that the job of the Repair Cafe is to mend things - and you’d not be wrong - but as Juliet, one of the textile repairers says - we are actually in the business of making smiles and happy tears when particularly precious items can be brought back to life.
When it all began…
And yes, we’ve been doing it for four years! It all began in the latter stages of Covid, in the spring of 2021, when a little group known then as Wycombe Environment decided that setting up a Repair Cafe was the next project. Well, to be precise, it was Maddy Howe actually! She brought the idea to the group, and the group thought it was just the ticket.
So we reached out to different people. The then Vicar of All Saints, Hugh Ellis, was happy for us to start in the Church - it was suggested as a ‘better than nothing’ venue, while we found something better - but we’ve never moved on because the Church is so welcoming. They already have the cafe - the Mustard Seed Cafe - so it made our job quite straightforward because we only needed to focus on the repairing, and not also having to arrange tea and coffee.
Two people in the Wycombe Environment group were confident in electrical and mechanical repairs, and Maddy knew someone that was willing to help on textile repairs. So that was enough to get going. And we kept it really very simple, and thankfully, because of the information available through the international repair cafe network, there was lots of advice for those setting up.
We decided to start in August, because we thought not many people would be about, and we were right, so it allowed us to ‘learn by doing’, rather than spending the summer planning for an autumn launch, and then finding that what we’d planned for wasn’t quite the way it would work in reality anyway.
What was quite wonderful to behold was that having started, setting up the Facebook page, other repairers just seemed to materialise, seemingly out of no-where. A lovely example of ‘build it and they will come’. It wasn’t long before it was clear we had a solid team of repairers, who simply enjoy repairing things, and that we were going to be able to keep the repair cafe going as a regular community fixture.
And so it has proved, as we’ve been going ever since! We tend now not to hold a session in August, but for the 11 other months we are there ready to mend lamps, CD players, leaf blowers, blenders, coats, shirts, sweaters, dresses, you name it, we’ve mended it - or it feels that way!
Just under a half of our customers hear about us through social media and online, and about 2 in 5 come through word of mouth. Over 10% come because of the banner we put out each time, and from the Refresh shop.
And all of this by volunteers, time given freely to the community to keep clothes, appliances and many other things too, from being thrown away, in exchange for donations from the customers, which support the work of Wycombe Environment Centre, the charity that runs the Repair Cafe, the Refresh shop and other things too!
What has been through our repairers hands?
So what have we repaired over the last 4 years?
Well, we’ve had nearly 700 items brought to us, of which about 80% get either repaired (63%) or partially repaired (18%). We think that’s a pretty good success rate. Just 130 items (20%) couldn’t be repaired.
Top of the list, at 188 items - just over a quarter of all that is brought to us - are household electrical appliances: posters, vacuum cleaners, mixers and the like.
Next up - just under a quarter - are sewn repairs - garments, bags and other household items, 161 items in total. A whopping quarter of all the textile repairs is perhaps the most enjoyable type of repair that we do - mending teddy bears, dolls and other soft toys. We’ve put 43 of our vital life long companions back together - some of which have been 60+ years young! It is always a delight to see the joy on the owners faces when they see the toy that means so much to them restored to life!
About 10% (74 items) are tools, both electrical and manual, and another roughly 10% (62 items) is sound equipment, TVs and similar things.
Close behind these, at 57 items is clocks and watches. Our wonderful clock and watch repairer often takes things home, and he has a houseful of clocks and watches queuing up to be mended. So it can sometimes take months before a repair cafe item gets to the front of the queue.
Just over 5% are lights and lamps (44 items)
That leaves the ‘other’ category, which makes up 15% of the items we have seen, at 105 items. this is made up of books - yes, we have a book binder among our repairers! - non-electrical appliances, bicycles, furniture and jewellery.
I’m not quite sure what category ‘glueing’ comes into - it probably comes into ‘other’, although a variety of things can be mended by glueing. This is also a specialism for which there can be quite a waiting list!
So how do we know that this is what we’ve repaired? Because it’s not just the repairers at the Repair Cafe. There is also a dedicated ‘front of house’ team that great customers, take their details, pair them (or rather their item!) up with the most suitable repairer, make sure everyone has tea and coffee, and, importantly, at the end of the session, take home the paperwork and enter it all into an international database!
And of course all these items represent waste that has been prevented, natural materials that have needed to be mined or manufactured, and carbon saved from being emitted.
Some memorable stories
But beyond the stats, it’s the stories that we remember. Quite often it is team work, such as the 70year old Teddy that had a metal connection for its wobbly head, that brought mechanical repairer Marten together with the textile wizards Juliet and Tracey. That teddy did not have a wobbly head after that team had done its work! Or the industrial floor cleaner that Nigel and Tariq doggedly worked on.
Paul’s most memorable repair was the WW1 Tower of London poppy that he carefully pieced (and glued) back together.
Then there was some item - and quite what it was is now forgotten - that had some tiny screws which ended up rolling onto the floor, which had a number of us on our hands and knees, and finding out just how far tiny screws can roll!
John remembers repairing a birthday card that played a tune, that the customer had been bought for her 5 year old son, some 21 years ago, with the family tradition became that the card was sent every year - except that in that 21st year the tune no longer played. John managed to cut the card open and found the batteries were dead - not really a surprise after 21 years. Luckily one of the other repairers had some of the right batteries, and with that the card was singing again, leaving a very happy customer!
Jonathan likes the ‘ahah’ moment when what he says he thinks is the problem turns out to be the case. He says that a fairly common fault with electronics of a certain age is a faulty capacitor, so he enjoys saying - knowingly - ‘I think its a faulty capacitor’, then opening it up, finding the capacitor swiftly which, indeed, is the fault, leaving his customers well impressed.
Nigel recalls his easiest - but also his most appreciated - repair was a very large ride-on child’s car. It was electrically powered, and could only go either forward or backward (Nigel can’t quite remember which it was!). The fault was the reversing switch, which, Nigel says, had a spare set of contacts, so he could simply move the wires and the job was done. The mother was very grateful, having saved several hundred pounds for a new one.
And Juliet recently repaired a little blue bear, and the customer was so grateful that she gave to Juliet another little blue bear which she had spotted in a shop.
We would love to have more frequent repair cafes, and hold them in other parts of the town too, so if you are inspired by reading this, please get in touch and join the team. Drop an email to Maddy on repaircafe@refreshwycombe.org, and we’ll be in touch!