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.

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