Pods and Pump Out

A size-able machine for manouvring on your precious
mown grass. 

Friends of the Blog will know that I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of a man to do the pump-out on our septic tank. Probably not the best subject for a blog-post (I hope you've had your dinner!)  but a vital part of servicing a small-holding in the West of Ireland, where no mains sewage system comes within tens of miles of us. Also a service not met by some dinky 'Council' contractor with a small truck and garden-friendly equipment.

The huge tank and massive pipe make the "tiny" septic tank
 look really silly!

Here it is some local Agricultural Contractor who will turn up with a huge 4WD tractor and a slurry tank capable of taking massive doses of cattle slurry from the underground tanks below the big "slatted floor" of a winter cattle-shed. These rigs look to be 30-40 feet long (must admit, didn't actually measure it!) and need BIG spaces to manouvre in and to turn around.

For the first time in 5 years we can see the tank empty. The guy
also advises us to fit a 'T' and an up-pipe to the end of that exit
pipe you can see in the pic. 

When you book one and start to worry about this, you realise the lack of wisdom in all your decisions to put a rinky-dink gateway here which is OK for your Fiat Panda and a 6' by 4' 2-pig trailer, and a fence to contain your geese, or a few new trees planted just so. There is also the issue of the guy turning the rig round on your precious grass just so close to your pond. I ended up ripping out some fences and gateways just to get the guy to the tank.

Ah well, he came, he saw, he managed to turn the 'rig' with only one tractor tyre dipped into the pond (!)  and he sucked us all up. His huge tank/pump did such a good job on the 'water' that we might have been left with all the floating solids sitting on the sediment, but the guy turned the pump the other way and whooshed a great dollop of the 'water' back down into our tank to stir it all up and then sucked up the loosened up mixture.

Ooops.
Just the one tyre dipped into the pond.

The tank, we can now see, is a good solidly built sound affair, about 6 feet by 4 and 5'9" deep. Our man advised us to enhance the outflow with a vertical up-pipe and a 'T' - that way apparently the floating solids cannot block the outflow because the outflow draws 'water' from half way up the tank. We live and learn.

The other interesting aspect of this to us was that you are expected (most people.....) to have a place for the guy to empty the tank - a handy chunk of bog for example. They do not normally get asked to take it away and will charge you more for that add-on. Well, we have no such handy bog-field and I did not want 4000 litres of human "waste" spread all over the veg patch or the sheep grazing (even assuming the rig could get access). I happily paid the extra and watched the half-full tanker trundle off down the road. The guy was actually from nearby village Gortaganny and was off to a wedding after my job. He'd already met his friends for Breakfast in Balla-D where they'd joked with him that he better wash the tanker down before he arrived at the Ceremony. A nice lad. We will definitely use him again if we need someone, but we hope the tank with it's newly enhanced outflow will go another 6 years first!

In some lights this gnarly old bit of hawthorn reminds me of a
spooky dog. 

Meanwhile, while I'm on the entertainment value of Septic Tank emptying, I thought you might appreciate a list of our newest version of 'entertainment' out here where we have chosen to eschew TV, where we've watched all the 'old TV' we felt like buying as boxed sets, where we can't reliably get Radio 4 and we cannot get anything 'big' through the rubbish broad-band. That is the relatively new medium of Pod-Casts, or "pods".

We still follow, to a degree, the American politics pods from outlets such as Crooked Media, 538 and NPR (National Public Radio) but after the initial excitement of Trump's coming to power, these have waned a bit because nothing much is happening.

https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/
https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-the-world/
http://www.npr.org/podcasts/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/politics-podcast/

Baby Horse Chestnut doing its Autumn thing

We are glued, currently, to the Guardian's Brexit one, "Brexit Means" which seems to be standing aghast and watching with increasing horror as the Brexit process stutters and stalls and comes unravelled. The most recent, which covered farming, was truly scary.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/audio/2017/oct/25/what-will-become-of-food-and-farming-brexit-means-podcast

Misty Autumn Morning

We also enjoy a series of pods from a pair of friends who cover modern Irish culture and direction by also describing the history of these aspects and how Ireland arrived at its current position. The most recent covered the very controversial abortion issue and the planned Referendum next year to "Repeal the 8th" (Amendment to the Constitution).

https://theirishpassport.com/podcast/episode-11-abortion/

I am glued to a farming one by a guy (Will Penri Evans) who farms in Wales and who is on a mission to 'sell' farming to the wider public as a good thing. He gets a different guest on each week for an hour long interview, the guests being the great/good/influential from UK (and overseas) agriculture, particularly when they have a Twitter presence, most recently Tom Edwards who has, over the last few years, set up a company making a 'craft' gin (Warner and Edwards Rhubarb Gin)

http://rockandrollfarming.libsyn.com/website/028-united-in-spirit

Finally, there is a nice one I have only recently locked on to, done via Radio Cardiff by a friend I have 'met' through the Irish Smallholders' Twitter account. She is either Helen Joy or Valerie Chicken (according to taste) and the pods are called "World of Joy". The most recent one covered attempts to re-vitalise the rural economy in the Vale of Glamorgan.

https://www.mixcloud.com/RadioCardiffPodcasts/

If you fancy any of those, be our guests.

4 Years Ago, Today

Albert still has his Sainsbury Dartford
Depot security badge

June 30th is one of our significant land mark dates. It was 4 years ago today that I ran out of usefulness to DHL contract distribution and the Sainsbury's Dartford Depot, allegedly, at least on my then terms and conditions. To be fair to them, they were very good to me, their 'then' longest serving employee with just under 29 years continuous service. Sadly, they don't make jobs like that any more! The settlement was very generous and I was treated really well but it was still a bitter-sweet day. My 'peers' did a special version of the morning meeting to acknowledge my efforts and I was allowed to spend a good part of the day wandering about the 500,000 sq feet depot bidding farewell to those among the 400+ employees I knew.

Our 'Hen with One Chick' now well
feathered up and starting to wander. 

Then at half past three (briefly interupted by a fire drill during which I was not allowed to leave the site) we did the proper farewell and I was presented with all the signed cards and some gifts. One of these, from those who knew that I 'hated' garden gnomes and was off to "spend more time in the garden" was, inevitably a gnome which they had even put through security check-in, so he had his own access badge with his photo and his name, Albert Green. I still have him gracing a cairn of boulders in the front garden. If any of my old 'DHL lot' read this, thanks again and I will never forget you guys. This was 2011 and is no doubt covered in this blog if you want to go look.

The 'new' Fiat Panda

From today it will also be the day we bought our first Irish car, a replacement for the belovéd red Fiat Panda, Tim, which we decided was getting a bit too close to sell by date to be relied on to do that many more years' service. The 'new' car is also  Fiat Panda 1100cc but brings us up to date by 6 years. It is basically the same as the previous one but has a different 'dash' and (Yay!) the old tape deck is replaced by a CD player. Now we can throw away the old speaking-book stories we'd been hanging onto since they were a thing, we no longer have anything to play them on. They were a couple of Shakespeare plays and some Terry Pratchett books and they have rattled around in the door pockets of the 04 reg car since we moved here.

The Captain checks out the new vehicle.

Whoever buys the old car will get quite a nice vehicle and now with shiny new front brake discs and shoes, the tow hitch carefully removed (the old wiring reinstated obviously) and well valeted throughout. We hope that they never find out that the head gasket has possibly leaked (we don't know for sure even now) and been sealed up with the Blue Devil gloop. May they drive for many more miles in the bliss of ignorance till the old lad dies of some unrelated aged ailment.

Barbara takes a look inside. 

We are very pleased with the 'new' one which seems as bright and willing as Tim did 6 years ago. We have not been any great distances yet - we brought the car home from near Ballyhaunis via a fuel top-up in Balla-D, then Liz nipped down to the PO to buy water when our water mains died (again), and now she is back in Balla-D for knitting. On that small sample, the car seems fine and we have great hopes that it will be as good as the previous Panda. When we transfered the insurance across we found that we are due a rebate because these newer cars are cheaper to insure. It is also cheaper to tax, being a modern, low emmissions engine. As far as I know it does not yet have a name, but that is Liz's department. The 'Tim' came from our UK reg letters which spelt a very abridged 'Timbuktu', but this is originally a Dublin reg car, so the only letter is the 'D' for Dublin.

One of the least focused pics I have ever taken (well, it is
very crisp on the wire!) but you can see one of the two chicks
hatched by the Elderberry Buff-Orp. 

Finally, our Elderberry Buff DID manage to hatch that egg and, in fact, a 2nd. One is the orange of a Buff Orp. the other paler, so it may be from a white Hubbard or a Sussex Ponte hen. Less than 24 hours old, these babies were already being shown how to peck at food and scratch, when I slid a shallow bowl of appropriate grub in under the wire - I think Mum was fairly hungry too, so was immediately clucking and fussing at the food so that she had an excuse to get a crop full while teaching the chicks. Well done Elderberry Buff. The clutch we gave her were a rescue of half a dozen from a hedgerow stash (it was all we had). 2 of these got broken along the way (one with a half-grown embryo inside). She's hatched 2 survivors, a third unbroken one proved to be sterile and a fourth is a Guinea fowl egg. That will also be sterile, obviously as we have no cock bird.

Timbuktu

Timbuktu

A brilliant result this morning means we have one less thing to worry about in our busy season, our trusty little Fiat Panda sails through its NCT (=MOT) this morning without even picking up an 'advisory'. This baby has just been our BEST EVER car of all the vehicles which have passed our way since we were wed even including all the 'posh' cars I used to run as 'company' cars and then just because our salaries allowed it. Most of those I never actually owned, as they were always on repayment deals which had you paying just the first 3 years' depreciation.

The Panda we bought as a 2nd car, a "little run about" for Liz to mainly use nipping about with Diamond. We never dreamed it would get much mileage on it or would be used for anything heavy or gruelling. It got named 'Timbuktu' as the UK number plate looked a bit like that word spelled badly. It came from the Fiat dealer in Sittingbourne (Kent), Burgess's and we happily paid off the loan over 2 years. It has turned out to be an absolute gem of a car which by now owes us nothing but keeps on keeping on. Diamond fell ill for the first time (Leukemia) within months of the car arriving so it quickly became a high mileage hospital visit/medical taxi, before being one of our emigration 'convoy' and then a builders' van and lately it is a farm run-about. It has been fitted with a tow hitch and is now also our trailer tug.

Hubbard chicks at Day 9, now with wing feathers. 

We are constantly amazed how much you can fit in it due to its blocky shape. If I buy lengths of wood now I can saw them to 8 foot lengths at the yard and they sit with one end in the passenger footwell and I can still close the back door. I don't think I could have done that in the 'posh' Citroën C4. Every week it happily hauls home from the feed merchant a 40 kg sack of 'Cosyglo' (smokeless fuel) plus various 20 and 25 kg sacks of animal feed as well as all our weekly shop. It is as "at home" on the long Motorway run down to Silverwoods where Liz possibly gives it more 'hammer' than it'd like. We hope to keep it going for a good while yet. We were given a rather coarse Timbuktu quote by one of our builder/contractors, but I'll save that to the end of this post.

Liz has been enjoying trying out some beeswax furniture polish. The wax cleaned up very well through the washes, boils and strains and gave us the required yellow disc which just needed the discoloured bottom sediment/scum scraping off it. This was melted and blended 4:1 with coconut oil (the only ingredients therefore being food-grade; you could happily eat this stuff if you wanted and can certainly get it all over your hands as 'hand cream' while you are polishing. Liz reports her hands and nails feeling marvellous at the end of the job.

Polishing an 'Uncle Barrie' turned wooden bowl. 

The mixture cools and semi-sets back to a white colour (the coconut oil, we guess) which remains workable provided it does not get too cold. We tried it out first on some bits of wood which didn't matter so much - the underside of our beech dining chairs and it produces a lovely lustre and a superb smell. It is now getting used to shine up our turned-wood fruit bowls and, when we can clear the table for more than a few minutes, will get a proper test on the dining table top. It is good stuff.

Testing the new polish on the underside of a chair. 

We were amazed when we looked it up, how much this stuff is worth, not that we would be selling it. We found a polish featuring turpentine and beeswax retailing at €11.59 for just 250 ml and the wax itself we have seen at £3.50 for 100g (£35 per kilo!). One of our bee-school lecturers stressed to us how important was the wax and kept reiterating that rule of thumb that bees create only 1/8 as much wax as they do honey. Comb is an amazingly strong but fine and delicate structure.

Jam jar alchemy. 

The beekeeper eventually gets the used comb 'back'; we are advised to rotate the frames out of the hive at one third per year and we are always scraping off 'brace comb' (wild comb) built by the bees in the "wrong places" in the hive. Brace comb though, is also delicate and only available in small quantities - I cleaned up the old frames from our failed hive today and gained only a smattering of fragments in the bottom of a bucket, maybe 70g?. Bees 'sweat' this stuff from glands under their abdomens and then manipulate it in their mouths to shape it into comb. Quite right that it is pricey, then!

New run for the giant rabbits

Meanwhile, the giant rabbits, Goldie and Nugget moved in to their proper big run today, having outgrown the little purpose-built 2 square meter, portable runs they have been using up to now. This is 3 m wide by 15m long and has bumpy ground, banks and trees to keep their digging instincts satisfied. They seem very happy with it and Nugget (as expected) has already started burrowing. The cat, Blue, joined them for a while, had a curious sniff inside the new 'bedroom' and play-chased them around a few times but he then got bored with them and they got bored with being chased and sat looking at him curiously.

Blue (cat) stalks the rabbits while the lambs and Polly watch.

We hope they will do a good job of keeping down the tall grasses, rushes and other herbs wich grow in there; it is the last remaining 'waste land' in this garden for which we have never really found the proper use. We tried to keep a path open through the jungle but as we never used the path it vanished, overgrown with tall vegetation.

And so to that dodgy rhyme from 804-Pete, our gravel-man. Learning that we'd come from 'Kint', he couldn't wait to tell us his story and rhyme. Allegedly a school mistress had set the class the job of fitting the word Timbuktu into a poem. 'Johnny's answer (why is it always Johnny?) was.

When Tim and I went down to 'Kint',
We met three ladies in a 'tint',
For want of something else to do,
I bucked one and Timbuktu.

I'm not about to explain it to you, so if you don't get it then ask Johnny. Have a heart - my Mum reads this. Talking of which, today that same lady, the 'Pud Lady', reaches a magnificent 88 years old today, so a big Happy Birthday, Mum from this blog.

Grafting (and Knowing Too Much about Cars?)

Our gnarly old apple tree. Route of main 'trunk' follows
yellow arrows.

That's 'grafting' as in splicing bits of apple together, not the Northern version of hard work; I am not claiming to be any more diligent than last year. You may recall that we have, tucked away at the bottom of what is now the pig run and ancient, gnarly apple tree growing on the steep bank to our North where there is the rusting wreck of an equally ancient outside toilet - maybe from the 1960's as Vendor Anna can remember it from her childhood.

Grafting a scion into a T-cut made in the
of a new-tree limb

The loo has long since collapsed down the bank and the tree has fallen down after it till, almost horizontal, it came to rest leaning on an old ash tree. Since then it has struggled to get back to the daylight above its original planting space by growing in a hairpin bend (see picture). In terms of its job as an apple tree it is a dead loss, all gnarly old wood, riddled with canker, very few blossoms and, in our experience, no fruit. It is also not in a position where you could realistically prune it to give it a new start in life. JD Bob remembers it as a fruiting tree and says that although he does not know the variety, it was a red striped apple, so maybe a Pippin of sorts.

Splice graft on 'twigs' of similar diameter.

I have often wondered whether we might resurrect it, in DNA at least, by taking graft material from its newer, less diseased wood, and splicing this onto a new rootstock. I have never done any grafting but I have seen plenty done. In a former life I worked for Geest (the banana outfit), but in Spalding we also had all the 'Van Geest' horticulture section who used a mainly Dutch labour force to mass produce their roses and fruit trees. The Dutch lads were on piece-work and would whizz along the rows, deftly cutting, splicing and binding in batches of 10,000 plants.

Baking with our own sausage meat. This
pie and these fine sausage rolls.

I have found some decent small branches/twigs on the old tree and, this week, an opportunity arose to buy 2 good rootstocks for €10 - Lidls were selling off some last bare-root dessert apple trees. I have tried 3 methods of grafting across 4 grafts. If they work, then 'happy days' - if not I will just grow the apple trees on till Autumn and have another go at a more sensible season (Autumn - the grafts like to do all their healing and scar tissue in the winter, so that they can romp away (hopefully) in spring, pushing sap through a healed cambium layer). These (3) are,,,

1. Slotting a 'scion' of just green cambium and bark with a side bud (peel the heart wood sliver off the 'inside' face of the slip) into a T-cut in the side of a new-tree limb
2. 'Side grafting' a piece of twig onto the end of a cut limb which is bigger than your twig, by matching the cut face of the twig to the cambium of a cut in the side (like the cut you'd first make in trying to sharpen a pencil)
3. 'Splicing' a twig onto a twig on the parent tree which is the same size.

I am leaving the original (new) tree attached to act as a 'Mother limb' which can be cut away if the grafts take. I had no proper grafting tape so I used masking tape and string, and I had no graft-sealing gloop (or tree grease) so I'm just winging it. If we can get these grafts to take and grow, eventually producing the mythical striped apples, we will name the variety TK-Min after the house's previous owner. We'll see.

The Fiat gets parked with its nose in
the clouds. 

I mentioned previously that we were struggling with a strange car engine problem which was looking awfully like an expensive, open-engine job; a head gasket or burnt valves. Well, touching lots of wood and trying desperately not to tempt fate, we may have it sorted after a good few hours of diagnostics and trying things mainly by ace local garage man, Jimmy H who also turns out to be something of a Fiat expert by happy coincidence. I normally love all that investigation-diagnostics-problem-solving stuff (it's what I used to do at work) but it's not quite so enjoyable or relaxing when your mode of transport and ability to shop and buy stock feed depends on it.

Bleed nipple on water hose (screw removed)

I probably know more about Fiat Pandas now than it is healthy to know. My knowledge and experience has up to now been on old crocks like our family Morris 1000, my first car (an Austin 1100) and the 2CV. The newer cars I have owned since I started earning sensible money have all been on finance deals which tie you in to getting the car serviced at a main dealer (Thank you, Hidson's of Rainham, Kent), so all the new technology, modern engines and electronoics have passed me by. My old cars only ever had one ignition coil. I was unaware that even babies like our 1 litre Panda now often have 2 coils (each serving 2 plugs) or even 4. Our man Jimmy, with his disgnostic codes sussed that we had a miss-fire on cylinders 1 and 4, so was able (once 'we' suspected the ignition) to predict that Coil B was at fault, sourced a new one (only €30) and had it swapped out in 45 minutes.

The new metal rectangle here is our shiny new Coil B

I have also got to the bottom of the infamous air-lock problem in Fiat Pandas and sorted that. Panda's apparently have a design fault, with their heater matrix way higher than the radiator filler, so most people (including us for a while!) only manage to part-fill the coolant system and drive around like that in bliss of ignorance, ignoring the fact that the temperature guage rises when you idle and there are sometimes odd screechy noises where the water pump is pumping air (well, steam, mainly). We now know that to fill the system you must park the car with the front wheels 18 inches higher than the back (i.e. on a ramp) and open bleed nipples at various places plus have the heater set to max. This way, when you glug water into the filler, if you also squeeze the rubber hoses you will worry all the air out. I managed to get 3 more litres of water into the system which had seemed full (at the filler); the system only carries 5-6 litres, so we must have been driving around half full. Scary.

The ever more chunky lamb, Feste.

Finally, we have at last had a good thaw. The snow is all gone and the big pond is almost free of ice. Air temperatures were up towards 9ºC. There were a few bees out flying today, presumably enjoying the chance to muck out the premises. This is the sensitive time for them. We read that no bee colonies really die in winter, they die in early spring when they make the mistake of trying to start getting active (the queen starts to lay eggs, for example) before there is sufficient food 'out there', or enough that they can access. In deepest winter the whole colony clusters into a tight ball to keep the queen and new eggs warm (34ºC) and they can actually starve surrounded by all the food, honey and pollen stores because those reserves are an inch away from the cluster and nobody wants to leave the cluster to go and get them - if the individual bee body temperature drops to below 8ºC it will die. Tough times. We are pleased to see the temperatures back up at 9ºC so that the workers can leave the cluster to get stores in and leave the hive to go hunting pussy willow, snowdrop and crocus pollen and nectar.

Every Day Country Folk

 Today my post will sing of stable doors and animals bolted, of riverside towns and expansionist chickens, of bunnies and beef. Grab a cup of coffee and a comfy chair. Sit back and enjoy and/or click past muttering "Bl***y Deefer's off on one again...."

 We had decided that what the still door-less Utility Room needed was a stable-style door in two halves, painted red to match the house front door. You can't seem to buy them anywhere except for mad money, a guy we asked to quote a price for us has joined our "choir invisible" of vanishing Irish tradesmen (I'll call you in a couple of days....), and making one from scratch is way beyond Dad’s carpentry skills and tools, with all those mortice and tenon joints etc. But then ace interweb ferretter, Mum came upon a website which advocating buying a suitable one-piece door and cutting it in half. You have to strengthen the door so that the half you cut off doesn't fall apart, of course, and you hang it first on 4 hinges to make sure it does what it's meant to, then you split it, re-hang the halves and finish with weather strips (2) and all the door furniture (bolts, handles etc). More complex than anything Dad had tried before; He’s a rustic arches and dodgy nest-boxes kinda bloke!) but hey... nothing ventured.

 So, orf to Carrick on Shannon went Dad, down the minor roads, dry stone walls, green green fields, leaving Mum with us behind as he had to bring a full sized door back in a Fiat Panda. Nice town, Carrick, all boaty, marinas and riverside pubs etc. Mum got down to some weeding in the gravel of the front terrace.

Before Dad started the carpentry Mum and Dad decided to move rabbit run en bloc down the western field to give bunnies a new bite of longer grass. Not a bother except this seems to unleash in the me, a new enthusiasm for biting through the chicken wire. On this occasion, unknown to Mum and Dad, I must have made a hole too small for a Westie but big enough for an escapist rabbit, but more of that later. They next closed off the gates at either end of the cattle race and open "Chicken-Gate" (which sounds like some dodgy American scandal inquiry) to give the chooks extra territory and a million worms and grubs unwise enough to live in the thin carpet of earth and grass over the concrete of the race. No escape downwards, guys! We expect very proteiny eggs tomorrow, Ladies.

And so to door wrangling, which goes OK and Dad is quite proud of the results. He finishes carpentering and sands off the door halves, passing them to Mum who is our proud, no-runs, gloss painter. She sits out in the yard on a stool in the sunshine with the door halves propped in front of herself on the big terracotta tubs, looking for all the world like a Parisian painter at her easel. Dad thinks “Ahhhhh sigh...Why do I love her at these moments?” Soppy git!

While she's a-painting, Dad grabs the shovel and barrow and moves a bit more soil from round the horse-drawn-hay-rake-in-a-hedge (hdhriah) to fill the two newest raised beds. It's hot. he finishes and grabs a cool Guinness on the front terrace. Coco, joins him. I am pre-occupied elsewhere so I don’t know this is happening. They sit and watch Ginny, the grey and white rabbit lollop past them down the drive towards the road. ARGHHHH! Dad jumps up, shouting to Mum to help and sprints across lawn to road in time to see Ginny crouch and freeze on the grass verge as a tractor/trailer thunders by inches away. She's untouched (thank God she froze) but a bit shocked. Dad manages to grab her but she comes to, screams and kicks out. (Ouch! cheers Ginny). Dad returns her to the run and they've found the hole, fixed it, settled her and returned to the front terrace, when we all hear noises of cattle being moved down the lane towards us. Mum jumps up and races to stand at (lack of) front gate to stop ingress of beef animals and to stop us shouty dogs from scattering the cows. Spoilsport!

The relaxing life of everyday country folk....

Deefs

Gutters at Last

 Two of our longest standing story lines draw naturally to a conclusion. Mum's Fiat Panda has to be re-presented to Carrick on Shannon's NCT (Car Testing) station for it's re-test, resplendent in new front tyres and lower wishbones at silly o'clock on the 13th. Unlucky for some, but not for us today, as the car passes easily and we come away with the required multi coloured slip of paper to go in the third pocket of our windscreen stickers making us finally legal on that car, at last, displaying, as required by Law, proof of insurance, road tax and NCT test.

 On the same day we are hoping that the apron concreting guys will also show up and finish the concreting but the Ready-Mix boys are unable to deliver, so we must wait till tomorrow. However, out of the blue Gutters O'Grady phone. These guys priced the job up yonks ago and then vanished. It feels like about 6 weeks but might be less. Sparks was still around when they came, measured up and explained the method of producing formed aluminium profiles. Nobody uses plastic guttering lengths or cast iron any more unless they are made of money. We agreed the price and then waited for the call. And waited. And waited.

 Then they take us by surprise by phoning on the morning of the NCT test and asking whether they can come and do the job that same day. Of course they can. especially now there is no new wet concrete for them to put their ladders in by mistake.

2 guys arrive, the boss and an Eastern European lad named Denis. In 6 hours from about 11:30 to 17:30 they whizz round whipping off the old brittle and broken metal gutters and pulling out or breaking off the old supports. They make new gutter lengths using a fascinating machine in the back of the lorry. The machine holds a reel of sheet aluminium about 18 inches wide but feeds it through a forming machine which bends it into gutter shapes. These lengths slowly emerge from the back of the lorry and the 2nd man just supports the weight of the free end and walks away from the lorry till the first guy gets the length he needs and stops the machine to guillotine the end off. Ends are crimped on with pliers and sealed with mastic. The shape includes the brackets inside the gutter trough, which will be fixed to the fascias with special fixing screw/nail things.

It is quite funny to see, in side view, the man apparently pulling a length of gutter way too long to have been in the lorry, out of its back. Sparks tells us it looks even more bizarre when the machine is in a short vehicle like a Transit van.

So, the boys fit all the horizontals and then run all the down-pipes to direct all our storm water into the drain gulleys and so, under the new yard, to the dug-out ditch below the house. Next time it rains we all enjoy watching the water being directed 'properly' and hearing it gurgle down the drains. We enjoy even more that it is no longer pouring off roof ends and down walls, filling window boxes to overflowing and water-falling past windows. There seems to be a lot less making puddle in the yard, too!

That's more like it!
Deefs

Vehicular Admin

I think we've mentioned before the fun and games we are having trying to import our two remaining cars into Ireland. This process seems to go through 4 or five stages and takes weeks if not months.

First stage was to start the legal process but to avoid having to pay Vehicle Registration Duty (V.R.T.). VRT is due on all cars which Ireland decides are 'new' and is anxious to get their slice of any moneys you might make by importing cars and selling them on, so to avoid paying it, you must prove that it's your car, for your use, which you genuinely owned prior to moving to Ireland, brought with you, still own and intend to continue to own and not sell on.

This involves a 7 page form for each car and to the form must be attached "EVIDENCE" proving each stage. You must first prove the car exists as an item (so, UK registration paperwork, chassis number, engine number, details of make, model, engine size, emissions etc). You must prove you owned it (invoices at purchase, car loan paperwork) and lived in UK (proofs of address, bank statements showing regular 'life' - shopping at Tesco, paying vet bills or school fees, subscribing to clubs, paying utility bills etc). You must then prove you properly moved (removal invoices, ferry tickets) and that you shut down that home and moved out (Utility bill closing accounts, final bills, change of address paperwork, rebates on unused insurance etc). You must prove you arrived and now live here (more Utility bills, setting up services to your new home, like broad-band, water, electricity, phone plus proof of 'life' here (more shopping, subscriptions, vet bills and local fees, not so easy when you've only just moved in). On the strength of that wad of paper (one wad for Mum and the Fiat Panda, one for Dad and the 2CV) you obtain a small slip of paper (per car) from the Revenue which is your exemption from paying VRT.

You can now make an appointment at a nearby VRT (Car Registration) Office which is 'round the back' of your nearby car testing station (National Car Test or NCT, which is the local equivalent to the MOT in England). This was the stage where we had to drive to Sligo through all that lovely scenery, which I think I have covered in an earlier post. Here Mum managed to get through 2 paperwork stages (including more proof of ID and proffering your exemption paperwork) and scored a new registration for the Fiat. The 2CV falls over at this point as it is 'a classic' (which translates as "the lady was unable to find a code for 1986 2CV on the system and had to refer the problem up to higher authority".) She (Clara Bow) has got no further. At 7th June she is now 7 days out of UK tax and UK insurance so Dad has had to take her off the road for now. We await word from Sligo VRT. Meanwhile, the story continues with just the Fiat Panda.

Note that to drive legally in Ireland, you should display in your windscreen a 3-pocket version of the UK 'tax disc holder', and the three pockets should display your tax disc, your proof of insurance and your proof of passing an NCT test. At this stage we have none of these and do not even have the three pocket holder, just our good old UK tax discs.

We try to pay road tax on the Fiat but the website process demands an insurance policy number so we back out. We contact FBD insurance (who insure our house) and find (tadaaaa!) that they are able to set up insurance even in the fluid state of semi-legal cars on UK plates, so we insure both cars. We need letters from the two UK insurers to verify our no-claims but both Direct Line (the Fiat) and Footman James (2CV) oblige. Direct Line can't cope with posting the proof to us here because their computer system DEMANDS a post code and Ireland doesn't have post codes. We have to get the letters sent to Pud Lady in Hastings (UK) and posted on by Tom (Thanks Tom!). The insurance for the 3-pocket holder will proudly say the UK registration numbers, but we can get that changed easily enough).

With Irish Insurance policies, we can now proceed to road tax (Fiat Only, we still have not Irish Reg for the 2CV). With an Irish reg number for the Fiat we can bimble round to our local garage and get Irish number plates made up and then book the car into its NCT test. Our local station (Castlerea) cannot do us till June 12th, so we hunt around and find that the one in Carrick on Shannon can do Sat 2nd June. We get the garage to do a 'pre-test' (which is free but on the nod-and-a-wink understanding that you bring the car to them for any work needed). They find 'borderline' front tyres and ball joints but advise us it's worth a punt. Needing to use Carrick turns out to be a bonus because Carrick turns out to be not only a lovely river side boating town, but also has a wealth of shops which we should probably go have a good look round. Very picturesque. Lots of people in deck-shoes!

The Fiat unfortunately fails, as feared, on the tyres and ball joints, so is now booked back into the garage for that work, but should then be OK to get retested within 28 days and we may soon have one legal car! More on the 2CV when there is something to report. I fear we may be a while!

Deefs

Timbuktu

There is a new kid on the block, but this time it's not a dog, but a car. Mum has bought a new "baby", a small Fiat which goes by the unlikely name of Timbuktu due to it's combination of registration letters. Pics soon, but for now it is being treated with great care and driven round to show it off to Diamond and the Angel B etc, and parked on the drive, with Dad's car evicted to the roadside.

Timbuktu is a very smart rosé-wine red the same colour as a previous Fiat (Cinquecento) Mum had. This one is a panda. We have not been allowed in it yet (Him? Her? - what's it gonna be , Mum. We're guessing "him" as it is called "Tim" but you can never tell).

We leave all this behind and head for the Forest. We park at the Jacket's Field entrance (it's the way we usually go in when we're looking for deer) and make a triangle of paths, which does about an hour - all Meggie's up for these days, as she starts to slow down. We don't see any deer.

A mob of long-tailed tits comes through the garden this afternoon.

Have a good weekend

Deefer