My father was absolutely hopeless. I wish I'd have had the chance to have known "Uncle Jack" (actually my mother's uncle) better. He worked as a chauffeur/mechanic for one of the shoddy mill owners in Yorkshire and apparently was a highly skilled engineer and occasional inventor.

Me, I always had an interest in pulling things apart to see how they worked but have limited abilities.

I suppose necessity was one of my drivers. As a teenager with a motorbike we used to ride round a field, if there is no one to pay for a job and no one else to help, you learn to fix what you can yourself. In household where (at that time) no one else could put up a shelf or fix a tap washer, you learn how do do it... Although I suppose some interest in doing these things helps...

I'm probably less interested in fixing these days than I was and in some cases, if we were stuck, we'd probably turn to another family member, eg. one brother is a time served mechanic and far better than me at that sort of thing...

... and probably look more to the very occasional "project" instead. Something like my attepted "windmill" suits me as there was a tiny bit of lathe work and some programming (you can eg. start stop it with an android and it changes speed and direction) inolved so it combines things I've picked up.

But I don't know any other family member interested in trying that sort of thing.