Restoration Age.

I wonder if, nearing seventy, I’m reaching an age where, though I can finally afford new things, I prefer to restore old ones. It’s probably a subconscious urge to be restored oneself. No longer needed in the universal wealth creation process I seem to be struggling to find some use in the retirement home for things. So far this year I’ve already restored a hospitalised Sitar from the multiple injuries of the musical instrument equivalent of a car crash, though its ten year wait for surgery makes the NHS look positively speedy. I have a Yamaha SRX600 Sports Single in the shed and a Mercedes in our concrete front garden that I can’t bring myself to the over egging exaggeration of calling it a drive. Both are tired but lovely and worth nothing however much I might polish them up. The analogy to self becomes even clearer. Today I continued restoring an old flamenco guitar I bought second hand in Granada in 1965. It befriended me through love-loss, art school and beyond before it was superseded by a classical from Barcelona, a Gibson SG copy and children. Almost forgotten I lent it to a young lad to learn on, the son of a fellow guitarist friend who died. It came back with a crack in the heal of the neck tastefully filled but not mended. With the vagaries of atoms and time it broke in two catastrophically, the neck taking the fingerboard and chunks of the soundboard and hole decoration with it. I’d already glued that lot back together and today I glued the loose ribs on the underside of the front soundboard, a job that makes scratching one’s right shoulder with one’s left foot with your eyes closed seem plausible. It consists of loading a paintbrush with boiling glue, inserting brush, hand and wrist into the sound hole and, guided only by imagination, applying glue to anything that sticks up and might possibly be a rib. There were four loose and after cleaning up I found the bridge was rattling and the front was close but not glued to the side round the upper bout. More boiling glue and it is now rattle free. I’ve made a new nut and lowered the bridge saddle because my neck gluing was a tad off so it’s ready for new strings. OK its front has bellied out like mine and I may be not a moment younger but my friend will play again.