I have just found something I didn't know I still had. I was rooting around in the garage just now, looking for a tube of glue that wasn't there, when, after delving into the utmost depths of the "drawers and shelves and boxes of useful things I might need one day", I found, underneath a Haynes manual for a Mk1 Fiat Panda...
...my old brass Zippo lighter.
Now, I haven't smoked for decades, and even in the later years of my nicotine habit, I'd been using plastic disposable lighters. I do remember why I stopped using the Zippo, it was because at that time, I was getting on a lot of aeroplanes and anyone who has ever had a petrol lighter in their jeans pocket while on a plane will know that the cabin pressure change causes the petrol to expand and soak your crotch in lighter fluid. Lighter fluid is an irritant, and you just have to hope that there's a yoghurt with the meal so that you can retire to the bogs to salve the affected area. Much easier to use a throwaway gas lighter. Fountain pens are similarly challenging of course, but I digress.
Anyway, the Zippo. Also found a tub of Brasso wadding and it has cleaned up a treat. I've now ordered some lighter fluid and some wicks and flints from Amazon, they're coming tomorrow apparently, and I'm really rather unnecessarily exited about getting it working again. I was trying to work out how old it is, and it must be about 45 years old.
Thing is, I won't really have anything, in the short term anyway, to set fire to with it, but that's not really the point is it? I'm sure there will be candles or something at Christmas that will need to be lit.
Fair chuffed, inexplicably enough.
What pleasing things have you found that you'd forgotten about?
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An old wood and glass washboard. It was in the first house we bought in '71 and I just hung on to it for some reason. Found it in the shed I'm sorting out pending a house move. I got four quid for it yesterday on facebook market place. I can't recall if there were any tongs with it.
Now if I can convince SWMBO to get rid of her old doll's house, we've three grandsons and I can't see them playing with it.
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A laminating machine. Forgotten that I had it.
Now! What can I laminate?
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'Exited" - excited. Danm smell cheeker.
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Check out this link...
Washboard player is amazing
youtu.be/_ZdMxFiUf9Q
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I stopped taking the Zippo on flights for exactly the same reason. Hurts like hell doesn't it?
I suppose if there's nothing to set fire to when your flints and fluid arrives you can always sniff the fluid.
Latest find was a couple of weeks ago in the loft. A ThinkPad 850 MT-6042 running AIX 4.1.5. I can't remember the password but there are two slots for the PCMCIA Token Ring cards I found a while ago.
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When I had a zippo I was too poor for airplanes. I had the zippo because you could put any old vaguely inflammable alcohol on it and it would work. A fact that was more often relevant to me than not.
As for me about 3 months ago I found my iPaq. It was hope over reality for a long time but I never stopped loving it and hoping for more.
I've got the docking station, the big battery and everything in perfect working order.
The fact that it is of no earthly use is nought but a mere bagatelle.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 22 Aug 21 at 19:51
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When we moved here twenty years ago I bought a newly purchased torque wrench down with me.
Despite turning the garage upside down I could never find it and thought one of the removal men had half inched it. Five years ago I demolished an old wooden shed which was falling to bits, and on clearing it out there in a box in the corner wrapped in greaseproof paper was the said wrench.
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I have just found... - bathtub tom
