Any Old Iron?

A quick picture of yours truly either admiring the sailing barge SB Orinoco, or possibly closely examining the mud on which she rests for its perfumic and beauty enhancing potential. Gotta look and smell my best for the house-vetting Lady from Cinnamon Trust.

Dad gets a day off today in lieu of working last weekend and we all decide to have a day of catching up on the chores. First up a goodly walk round the boatyard and back through town. Next we pull the back seats out of the 2CV (dead easy, two bolts, tilt the seat forward and it unhooks at the front and slides easily out through the rear door aperture. 2CV-ers regularly perform this trick in picnic mode and end up with a very comfortable picnic seat) and head for the allotments.

Here we must gather up the scrap metal, bits of old fence, chicken wire, angle iron, metal pipe and tubes generated by last weekends tidying purge and take it to the tip. While we're there we gather up a small pile from fellow-allotmenter Nick G who has done similar and take his too. We also gather up the small mountain of old carpet, pond liner, plastic fruit-cage mesh and the like to take that to the tip too. Oh, and the roll of carpet, old r*t chewed plastic compost "dalek" and 2 bags of holly leaves from the garden. 3 trips to the tip in all. We're tired and (some of us) sweaty!

Next job, we have Uncle Jim from next door round to help repair a broken off fence post. This proves to be rotted through where it used to be completely entwined in the enormous jasmine 'vine'. The boys use judicious force from a 14lb sledge hammer to persuade a chunk of angle iron down through the rotten post-base without damaging the original concrete, and the post top can then be strapped to this. Good as new. Well, close enough anyway.

...and we get a lovely email from a friend who lives in the famous Challock Forest (hey Rona!). We had all heard that we might need to be careful in the Forest from now as "wild boars" have finally arrived. This turned out to be a false alarm. The "boar" turned out to be a stupidly tame and soppy black farm pig of some heritage breed, which is now recaptured and living safely in Chilham Animal Rescue Centre chasing chickens and charming the visitors.

Deefs