fixing the brakes

I've had some sloppy responses from the front brake on my bike of late. Today I finally took the thing to a shop to ask about a repair.

Glad I did; it turns out that the mechanism holding the forks in place is coming apart at the top. Already it's essentially impossible to get any of the nuts to stay in place. The fellow who runs the shop's repair garage is going to have a look around at for any stock they have in parts, but it's one of the hazards of using an old bike that that's usually a challenge. In this case, he referred to the system in use on my bike as "archaic".