Courtesy of MLusk at Weather Records

Coolangatta : Ok Oh and the Grinning Gods of Good Fortune

The espresso-machine-repair-man raises a lazy eyebrow as I walk through the door for the second time this morning.  "It isn't clogged?"  "No, well, I don't think so. I took it apart, like you said, and cleaned it out, but it still isn't working."   His eyebrow, a little higher.  "Did you run water through it?"  "Yeah, and I took it apart, just like you said, but I didn't want to take it too much apart, you know..." In mental hindsight, via this retelling, my voice trails off a little at the end there, as my voice normally does at the ends of those kinds of sentences.  "Hold on, I'll go get a thing."  My wife looks around, takes a little breath.  "How nice it must be to work in a place with this smell!"  "Yeah.  I wonder if you get a contact high from the coffee bean fumes." "I'm sure. You must."  "Prolly keeps him up at night."  "I'm sure you get used to it." He returns with a clipboard and a pen. The paper has lines for a name and an address and a date.  There is a section for the synopsis of the problem.  There are little schematic line-drawings of removable espresso machine parts like the grinds-handle, the water tray and the lid, next to which there are small boxes one is supposed to mark to communicate what is included in the drop-off.  I left everything but the lid at home.  Below this, there are more schematics of the bodies of different espresso machines I am meant to understand is for delineating the general geography of the problem in the form of arrows and circles and scribbles, preferably with a red ball point pen, I am sure.  I write all the pertinent information down, unfortunately forgetting to include the word malfunctioning.  The repair man, dressed in black trousers and a white polo,  pulls the machine out of the heavy canvas bag and gives it the once-over.  On the first line under the heading Condition he writes excellent condition.  At this, I am filled with a small but inexplicably sincere amount of pride.

1. "I want to run the marathon, but I don't think I'll get around to it."
2. "You can't say you won't.  As soon as you say you won't, you won't. You have to say out loud you will, and then you'll at least have a chance.  If you start out saying you won't do something, it will never happen!"
1. Nods head, sheepishly.
3. "Unless you get lucky."
2. "Yeah, well a broken clock is right twice a day."
3. "That's not luck, that's inevitability."

I go to pick up the car.  The Korean man, from behind his square, wire-rimmed glasses, explains to me with what I can't officially call a glint in his eye, that the problem looks like it was caused by some cold rats taking refuge from a frigid winter's night in the heat of my recently parked car, nibbling through some wires for a midnight snack.

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