<cue theme music>
<montage of craftspeople hard at work>
<old timey door opens, and a middle aged gentleman walks in with large box.>
Jay: Welcome, what can we do for you?
George: I would like this plate set mended.
Jay: Oh that calls for our ceramics specialist Audrey. Audrey, would you come over here please?
Audrey: What have we here? Oh, a set of china. But what happened to them?
George: I’m afraid they had a bit of an … incident.
Jane: I’m sorry to hear that. Well, I’m sure we can get you sorted. Can you tell us something about what this set means to you?
George: Well, they are the last thing of my mother’s before she passed last year. And she got it from her mother when she got married. That must have been 1940 or 41?
Jay: Oh I see. So what happened to them? Broke during a move or something?
George: Oh no, I smashed them.
Jay: I’m sorry?
George: Yeah, I got drunk one night and just took a cricket bat to the lot of them.
Jay:….
George: And… I have to admit… it felt so bloody good.
Audrey: ….
George: I mean, before my mum passed, while she was on her deathbed, she called me over, and you know what she said to me?
Jay: uh, what?
George: She said, “George, you have always been a disappointment to me. You were a middling student, never married, and you didn’t go to law school like I wanted you to. But as you are my only child, I suppose I must pass on this china set to you, since no one else wants it. And they are just knock-offs, so not worth much anyway.”
Jay: So let me get this straight? You didn’t get on with your mum, and she passes on this fairly worthless set of dishes to you, which you then smash up. And now you want us to repair it for you?
George: That’s the sum of it, yes.
Jay: Well I suppose we COULD do it. But WHY you would want us to do it?
George: Jay, I have not had the best year… or the best decade, if I can be honest. Lost my job, my boyfriend left me, my favorite chips shop closed due to COVID. But smashing up that sodding ugly dish set that my mum forced on me from her deathbed was the best I’ve felt in ages. So, if its all the same to you, I’d like to do it… again.
Jay: Ah, well that makes sense then. Jane, let’s get to work!
<transition to montage of craftspeople at work>NARRATOR: Watch next week on Repair Shop, as Jay talks a couple out of restoring a truly frightening doll that no child today would be caught dead playing with and that would perpetuate racial stereotypes that were common at the time and should be left to rot in the past….