Two weeks since a post. Tsk, Tsk. Life has been a blur of new things. Carefully labeling the fuel cans in the barn so that the brush cutter doesn't get four stroke up its innards. Nor yet the quad get filled with 2 stroke. Then there's the mower.
I inherited a Shibaura SE4000 42hp tractor that had strapped to its PTO the scariest and most inappropriate mower I have ever seen. Hundreds of kilograms of offset flail mulching mower that would reduce a field of telegraph poles to matchsticks as soon as look at them was what I was supposed to mow the (admittedly very large) lawn with. Well I did once and had to go for counseling afterwards. This thing was all very fine and dandy for mowing under vines and mulching prunings when the property was an orchard but it was all wrong for turning aforementioned front lawn into the best short game practice facility this side of the Black Stump. Apart from being the wrong sort of mower it was too big for the tractor and it was offset - offset by about three bloody feet. Have you ever tried reversing an 'L' shaped vehicle through a shed door that is too narrow for the whole contraption but can accommodate each limb of the 'L' individually? It's enough to get me to take to the strong drink. Add to this the news that the damned thing needed a new set of blades and they would set me back the fat end of eleven hundred notes and it was a no brainer.
The WMD has gone. It was replaced yesterday with a brand spanking (red) Fieldmaster three rotor topping field mower. Now this is a whole lot better on all sorts of levels. Firstly you can reverse it back into its shed in a straight line. Second it actually mows the grass like what a mower should instead of gouging great parts of the countryside up and spitting them out as potting compost. We are not there quite though. The Shibaura has been orchardised - lowered, (I own a lowered vehicle) has smaller fatter tyres and a few other bits and pieces I don't understand. This means I have to get new restraining chain brackets attached to the rear of the PTO crankcase so I can have internal instead of external chains. External chains would just cut great holes in the tyres. The height of the two lower arms on the three point linkage isn't right as the mower raises on the hydraulics with a marked list to starboard and I suspect the top link is set (by me) at the wrong length as the skids don't 'float' over bumps like they should but dig in. Oh, and I need weight (and I mean heaps of it) attached to the front of the tractor as steering is light at the best of times and disappears completely when the mower is 'up'. Still Gatman's can sort all that on Monday. The lawn is mowed and it is all rather good fun.
What has distracted me long enough from all this agricultural and pastoral stuff to put finger to keyboard? I let the the mandatory fuel efficiency labels to be placed on cars pass me buy. If you want to buy the Jag and ask how fuel efficient it is you will be told 'Not at all, a dyed in the wool gas guzzler. And, you can't buy it now just because you even asked'. No the event that has stirred me from my blogging torpor is Earth Hour.
This bit of politically correct bollocks starts in sixteen minutes time. We are supposed to turn off all power for an hour to show we care about how we are destroying the climate with our profligate wasting of energy. There was a piece on the News about it just now. (I seem to have stopped reading the newspapers now that they don't arrive at Marmite soldier time - I might even cancel my subscription.) It is being pushed by the usual earnest worrying type that are always in the forefront of this sort of crap. What a load of nonsense - even they admit it will make no difference to overall global power consumption. The news reporter even had a spokesman (sorry spokesperson) from a hospital regretting they would be unable to join in as it might be dangerous. Spare me.
Well it may come as no surprise to you that I will not be turning of anything in eleven minutes time. On the contrary I will turn on every light in the house - and the barn. It is a warm(-ish) night so I will turn on every fan I can find. I think I can fire up seven televisions, six computers, three printers, a microwave, two ovens, three electric jugs, a toasted sandwich maker, two food mixers, a dishwasher, washing machine, clothes drier, four heated towel rails, four bathroom underfloor heating units, five mini stereo/ghettoblasters and that's just the house. Off to the barn and I'll have the bench grinder going (a few hooks to sharpen, you understand), the drop saw savaging some planking, a heat gun straightening some lure skirts and a couple of electric drills doing nothing in particular. Whilst I'm over there I'll fire up the quad and get the brushcutter ticking over in case I run across some emergency thistle clearing in half an hour's time. Then it'll be back to the garage to start both cars. A brick on the accelerator of the supercharged V8 should keep it at over fifty litres an hour with no problem. It's at times like this I regret selling the Landcruiser. I'll then spend the rest of the hour walking up and down the drive to ensure that the sensor lights on the drive don't time out and go off.
Sod off you stupid, stupid morons.
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