What luck. But isn't that the way it always happens? In the midst of winter that's when a home furnace is likely to poop out and require replacement. Well, our furnace is one of the few originals installed when the house was built on our street that hasn't been replaced. Most of our neighbours have long ago had to have new furnaces installed because their original furnace just gave out. Ours, a technician who was replacing a part for us, was of a type of furnace that seldom didn't last a long time, unlike the types that were more vulnerable whose 'blocks' or something tend to crack. And ours is still chugging away.

No, what happened at our house yesterday was in the same vein but a little different. Our trusty old snow blower really is old. It had been bought, 23 years ago by my husband from the enterprising son of a colleague from work. His colleague's son had thought he would be able to earn some money toward his university tuition by starting up a small business of snow removal. As it happened for one reason or another his enterprise didn't take off and he was left with a really rugged snow blower that hadn't seen much action.

So my husband bought it soon after we bought the house we're now living in. And yesterday, when he hauled it out of the shed it's always stored in, the snow blower refused to go into gear. My husband immediately thought the dear old thing had bit the dust, that the transmission had gone. It had given us good, reliable service over the years, so there were no hard feelings about the inconvenience of having to shovel out the driveway by hand. And this morning, shovel out the piles of snow that the municipal snow plow had left at the end of the driveway.

And then my husband began to think about the situation, recalling how a few days earlier he had run into a wire which had got caught in the rotor blade. He'd removed it successfully and used the thing again, and it seemed just fine. What had happened is that a peony cage that I'd failed to take in from the garden was left there, and it had fallen over, with one of its legs inching close to the line between the garden and the walkway. And that's where the snow blower had been introduced to the wire.

It occurred to my husband that a shearing pin had snapped. And so now he's looking for snow blower parts to replace that shearing pin. Trouble is, most places sell only parts for the newer models, and he'll be lucky if he can find one for his golden oldie.