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Some days it’s all about the little things. When the flatmate moved back in probably the most cumbersome thing he brought over was his electric fan, which he took apart to transport. At the beginning of summer it turned out that a couple of vital pieces were missing, a big screw that secured the pole to the base, and the doohickey that secured the fan blade to the motor. Well imagine how clever I felt when, after putting the new cat stand together in June, I thought to try one of the big screws from the old stand on the base of Peter’s fan and… hey it worked! The pole fit right in and was secure. It was actually at that moment we realised that the doohickey was also missing. Fuck. Since then the fan has been in Peter’s room, standing there half assembled, doing nothing. Until today!
It didn’t occur to me you could actually go out an buy this particular doohickey, but I mean it’s 45º and every fan helps, so today we went out for a Cold Beer and brought the fan blade and MY doohickey from the living room fan (same as Peter’s fan) along with us to see if we could find a match somewhere. Like, yeah right. I honestly wasn’t that hopeful. Well, not only did we find a match, we found it in the most unlikely of places. There’s this tiny tiny tiny electrical shop near me, really it’s just a doorway and a tiny counter, with a whack of floor to ceiling shelves behind the counter.
A young guy was working there, so I went to the counter (Peter had to wait outside, not enough room for two inside), brandished the fan blade and the doohickey and said… I lost this, got anything like it? And without a word the guy took my doohickey and went back into the shelves. He removed one or two boxes, had a look inside, put them back, then removed another one. You have to understand that these shelves were totally choc-a-bloc, crammed full of, well I suppose, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. But apparently there was a fan doohickey section because a few minutes later he came back with THE EXACT SAME doohickey and said, that’ll be 2.50€
I’m still reeling. Not only because this guy obviously knew where EVERYTHING is in this place, but that out of all the things they would stock in this very tiny shop they would have a section for electric fan doohickeys. Of course now I’m expecting to find the bag with the original fan base screw and doohickey within the next few days.
casa azahar 
I feel ya. I was trying to merely change the bag on my vacuum cleaner and some soft plastic doodad flipped out of the bag compartment and not only do I have no idea where it’s supposed to go back on, after three tries that resulted in it flipping away again, I have no idea where it went. For reasons too weird to explain I had a backup vacuum, so like you, I’m just letting it sit there.
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Omg the exact same thing happened to me about two years ago! The tiny piece is still in a bowl and I have no idea where it goes back on. Been sweeping ever since.
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I have a hardware shop up the road from me that’s been there forever and I’m pretty sure you can get anything in there too. A while back I needed a new padlock for my side gate and the big commercial places charged a fortune for the size I needed. Then I was passing the little shop and thought I’d pop in and ask. They had exactly what I wanted for less than a quarter of the price of the big boys. It’ll definitely be my first point of call next time I need anything.
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Had the same experience getting housekeys cut, the indented high-security ones. Department store was going to charge 25€ PER KEY and I later got them in a little neighbourhood shop for 11€ each.
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