Making the cut
Fine weather finally arrived at the start of the week.
Fine weather means I have to cut the grass as I usually use the excuse that it's too cold or too wet. As it was neither of these I had to rely on my emergency fallback excuse – too busy.
Now excuses are all very well. They get me out of cutting the grass but the grass has a nasty habit of not playing ball and the fucking stuff just gets longer. And longer. And longer.
I finally ran out of excuses and went to do some mowing on Monday.
The rear nearside tyre was flat.
This happens every year. I remove the mower from under heaps of Winter rubbish and expose the fact that it's sitting at a drunken angle on a flat tyre. It's always the same one. The other tyres behave themselves and will go for years but not that rear nearside bugger.
There is a ritual involved here. I start off by practicing my entire blue vocabulary, which takes about half an hour. I then have to jack up the mower and remove the wheel. I then bring said wheel down to Spanner's gaff where phase two starts.
It's a tubeless wheel which means that the pressure in the tyre forces the tyre out to make an airtight seal. But if there's no air, then there is no seal and therefore I can't put air in as it escapes out the gap. Fuck!
Normally this next phase involves a whole lot of blood, sweat and language as I juggle the fucking thing while squirting air at it. I try a tourniquet of rope to distort the tyre against the rim and this involves even more cursing and swearing. It's not a pretty sight.
On Monday, I connected the air hose and miracles of miracles the fucking thing inflated first time. I couldn't believe it, but there was the guage telling me the tyre was fully inflated. Joy!
I went home, jacked the wheel back on and decided I had shed enough sweat for one day and made a mug of tea.
Tuesday dawned and I went to mow the lawn.
The fucking wheel was flat again.
There is this thing they have in films where a bloke goes around smashing everything in sight in a fit of rage. Normally this seems kind of daft because he'd only have to tidy after and replace all the smashed up stuff, but on Tuesday I understood. I am a patient bloke but I had passed my limit of patience so far back that it had vanished over the horizon.
I decided on a different tack and phoned around to see if I could buy an inner tube. I found a place who said they would have one the following day.
Wednesday dawned. I drove over and collected the tube. At last – a permanent solution to an annual problem. I was delighted with myself.
Have you ever tried fitting an inner tube in a tractor wheel? The last time I fitted a tube was about fifty five years ago and that was on a pushbike. Tractor wheels, I discovered are a little different. It is a job that requires strength [of which I still have a little], ingenuity, patience [which I had long run out of] and time. I fought with the fucking thing for about two hours but eventually I won. I stood back in wonderment and admired my mower now sitting squarely on four inflated wheels. I decided to cut the grass.
The battery was flat.
I eventually got it started and attacked the lawn.
I didn't realise the grass was so long. For the first time in living memory the mower nearly wasn't up to the job. It kept jamming by stuffing its innards with mulch and I had to keep reversing and raising the blades to clear it out. I finally finished at around eight last night.
It looks lovely and smells even better.
Anyone know where I can get a donkey?
I hear goats do a better job, wonder if there is a side line in goat milk to pay for itself
I was thinking along the lines of something with a little more horsepower than a goat. Donkeys are more horse size?
Get a nannygoat GD you can make better cheese from their milk.
I can't ride home from the pub on a goat. Well, I could I suppose but I'd look silly.
geese…short grass..superb alarm system…will attack visitors…eggs and meat…okay a bit of crap to deal with they ain't choosey where they drop it…they don't drink whisky nor do they smoke but one cannot have everything.
Now that is an excellent idea. There's no problem keeping them out of the house so they can shit where they like [Penny does that already]. I wonder how they would get on with the dog?
they'd keep her in her place unless you get goslings then they could make her mother goose…that would entertain any tourists who wander to your asylum gates.
No problem here, just leave your gate open and next thing you know there's a flock of sheep working their way through your grass. The only slight problem is they don't always stick to grass!!!
There's a two fold problem there. The first is that the dog would get out, and the second is that I wouldn't be guaranteed sheep. I'd be as likely to wake and find the place full of cattle or tourists' tents.
Don't you have a tyre repair shop near you, GD? Puncture repair costs me €10 down at Theodoros' shop – and that's on my 3.5 ton van, where he takes off the wheel, does the repair, re-fits the wheel and checks the pressure on the other 5 tyres.
is the 3.5 ton van actually big, very big one of these
http://www.quingoscooters.com/
five wheels.. and all that
ooh you carry a spare…
Nearest tyre repair place is in Skobieville. They'd fix my puncture and then rob the wheel. Anyhows I doubt they'd have much experience with tractor tyres.
I may have been in my cups last night, but I'm sure I replied to the comment from Bill above. And yet it seems to have disappeared into yhe aether. I don't suppose it got swallowed by your spam eating machine, did it? Or did I just imagine writing it? Maybe I should lay off the local red wine.
I don't think it was a very profound missive, so its absence will be no loss to the world.
If indeed I (metaphorically) penned it at all.
Hey Gradad, just nip down the Dail, there are plenty of donkeys there!
Although having said that, they'd probably crap all over the lawn and not bother their arses to eat the grass…
They'd eat the grass all right and then charge me through the nose for it.
You're confusing donkeys and asses.
As far as I am aware, donkeys know fuck-all about lawn mowers.
I've heard that cats know a thing or two about motorbikes, if that's any good to you?
Still waiting out mud season over here. And I can wait on mowing any grass since I have to:
Replace the other half of the stockade fence that sits between my backyard neighbor and myself.
Stack 4 cords of next season's firewood.
Prepare and re-seed the part of my property that was dug up in order to repair my backyard neighbor's water line after I stack that 4 cords of firewood I was talking about.
Rake up the leaves I wasn't able to rake up last year.
I figure I should be ready to start mowing the lawn by next spring then?