If it aint broke

Posted on by June 23, 2017 10

The garden looks a tad neglected at the moment.

The hedges are the worst offenders but that’s because my hedge cutter is acting the bollox.  I charge up its battery and the fucking thing cuts about ten foot of hedge before running out of charge and giving up the ghost.  Seeing as I have a couple of hundred feet of hedge, that just ain’t gonna work, especially as it takes about nine hours to recharge.

Yesterday I decided it was time the rough grass areas needed a bit of strimming.

“Just gonna head out to strim along the roadside” says I to Herself, “If the fucking strimmer isn’t broken as well, ha ha!”  I like my little jests.

So I took out the strimmer, topped off the petrol tank, primed the carburettor, set the choke, switched on and then gave the starter rope a good sharp pull.

I nearly sprained my wrist.

Yup!  The fucking thing had seized up.

Now this confused me.  Logic dictated that it couldn’t have seized as it was working perfectly last year and I am always careful to use the right petrol mix.  How could it turn from a functioning motor into a block of solid metal?  I decided to take it apart.

The first problem was that the casing was held on with those damned hexagonal screws that are ubiquitous these days.  I found a way of removing them and did so.  Next I had to remove the sparkplug.  This wasn’t so easy as it was recessed so I needed a proper spanner to do the job.  My adjustable wrench wasn’t going to cut it this time.  Also it hadn’t been removed in the twelve or so years since I bought it and I knew it was going to be tricky.

There are a few old wooden boxes lying around the garage and they are full of ironmongery that is so old that they are all rusted into one solid lump.  There are bolts, hinges, nails, screws an spanners and a load of things that have no apparent purpose.  I rooted through them and eventually found a spanner that actually fitted the plug.  It involved removing a deep crust of rust but what the hell.

I removed the plug with the help of some sweat, some leverage and a dose of WD40, and could now see the top of the piston.  I gave it a poke and it moved a fraction of an inch.  It wasn’t seized.  Good news and bad news.  Good news in that I didn’t need a new motor, and bad news that it still wasn’t working.

I don’t know what gave me the idea, but I decided to look at the other end – the business end where there is that bit of plastic string that whistles around and does the jobby.  It was locked solid.  I managed to disassemble it and spent a happy few minutes removing grass that had wound itself around the bearing and was packed as tight as steel.  I had to hack it with a very sharp knife and a screwdriver.  I tried pulling the starter rope again.  The engine turned!

I reassembled everything, refilled the tank and tried again.  It worked perfectly.

I spent a happy half our out on the road strimming the verges and the worst of the overhanging brambles.  I chatted with a couple of neighbours.  A motorist asked for directions to Greystones so I sent him up the mountain to The Bogs.  I inhaled a healthy dose of exhaust fumes and pollen and plastered myself in shards of grass, nettles, dock leaves and a bit of a Christmas tree that someone had dumped in my ditch.  One of my neighbours takes his strimming seriously and wears protective goggles, a fucking hard hat [why the fuck?] and ear protectors but I don’t bother with any of that crap.  The only concession to safety is that I wear a luminous waistcoat and that’s only to scare the shit out of drivers who come speeding around the bend and slam on the brakes, thinking I’m a speed trap.

“What took you so long?” Herself asked when I went back in.

I sighed.  She has no idea of the genius that is her husband.

 

Bringing on the Stormtroopers

Posted on by June 22, 2017 7

They seem to think I need a new car.

Most of you will know by now that I have a certain attitude towards advertising and in particular those apparently endless ones on television.  I never watch them as I either hold the programme I am about to watch so that I can zip through the breaks, or else I just mute them.  One way or the other though I am aware that they’re on.

I have noticed recently is the proliferation of advertisements for cars.  Every second slot seems to be trying to flog me one as if my life depended on it.  What struck me about these campaigns is their utter ridiculousness.

Now I have noticed these ads but not only can I not tell you the make or model of them [and the model names are becoming more stupid by the day] but they all look the same anyway.  Is it just me or does anyone else notice the similarity between modern car design and Start Wars stormtroopers’ helmets?

Anyhows, they wheel out their advertisement and I am shown bits of their vehicle.  Somehow, a glimpse of a wing mirror or an indicator light is supposed to make me envy to the point of purchase.  Or else they show the vehicle in a situation that is so bizarre that the meaning escapes me.

For example, there is one where a bloke is standing in a street when suddenly the ground opens beneath him and the car is jacked up to road level, surrounded by heavily armed men [more stormtroopers?].  Our hero doesn’t bat an eyelid but happily drives off.  Yup – that happens to me every day.

Then there is another where we see a car messing around with a bunch of heads on dog sledges.  There is an audience watching this seated in a steel box suspended over the edge of a cliff.  What the fuck is that about?

Another common theme is that of envy.  Bloke drives car and every pedestrian in sight stops to stare and admire.  Another bloke has to change his car because he is too ashamed to drive his daughter to school in the old one.  Picture smug schoolgirl leering at envious fellow pupils.  Smug schoolgirl bitch should be made fucking walk to school.

I have seen a few too where some bimbo is apparently at the wheel driving either through clouds of coloured powder bombs, or in some cases actual explosions.  Yes indeed – I need a car that can dodge regular explosions on the M11.

And this is the point.  Why show me a car driving along a river bed or skating around in the Alps?  I have no intention of ever doing either.  What I need is a vehicle that can get me from A to B as reliably as possible.  I don’t give a fuck what it looks like nor do I want to instil envy in anyone.  My willie is big enough that I don’t need to have a vehicular substitute..

If you really want to sell me a car, show me one that never gets stuck in traffic jams or has to cope with other lunatic drivers.

I might even unmute that one.

 

Raising my spirits

Posted on by June 21, 2017 28

I don’t believe in ghosts.

But then there are occasions when I sometimes wonder.

Many times I have come across phenomena which are real and tangible yet have no rational explanation in science or anywhere else for that matter.  After all, if a Neanderthal had been shown a computer he would have considered it utterly impossible, and would have dismissed it even though the evidence was there?  There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio, and all that shit?

If ghosts exist, and it’s a big IF, then this Manor is indeed haunted.  I have noticed many strange things over the years for which there is no rational behaviour.

Take for example, Mrs Chippy.  Mrs Chippy is our cat, and this morning he was fast asleep curled up on the couch.  [Yes – he’s a male and is called Mrs.  Know your history.]  It came to pass that I had to attend to a small call of nature, and when I returned, Mrs Chippy was now fast asleep curled up in the middle of the floor.  “So fucking what?” I hear you cry?  Well, there is the small but not insignificant fact that Mrs Chippy is a stuffed animal that the daughter bought Herself as a joke some years ago.  I grant he is incredibly realistic and has fooled many the guest to this establishment, but the fact remains – he is not a live cat.  So how the fuck did he move off the couch onto the floor?

And then there is The Smell.  People think of ghostly manifestations as shadowy translucent people who drift around the place, but surely they can manifest in other ways?  Occasionally when wandering around the gaff I will come across an odour which has no explanation, such as the scent of burning turf where there isn’t a turf fire in miles, or the scent of my father’s jacket which hasn’t been in the house for getting on for fifty years.

There is a room in the house here that usually has a rather pleasant smell – a smell of an old room in an old house: a sort of slightly musty papery smell.  I went in there on Sunday and breathed deeply.  The stench nearly knocked me flat.  It was a sweet sickly smell of decomposing bodies.  It was revolting to put it mildly.  I ducked out, took a lungful of fresh air, ducked in again and opened all the windows.

The stench lingered all day.  It was almost visible it was so strong.  Opening the windows had no effect whatsoever and the air remained foul and unbreathable.  There was nothing in there that could have caused such unpleasantness and the only possible cause I could think of was that a rat or something had died under the floorboards and was happily decomposing.  If that was the case there was fuck all I could do about it.

The next day the room had reverted to normal.  It was back to its vaguely musty smell again with no hint of the previous day’s ordure.

The is no rational explanation for either of those two manifestations.

Unless of course Mrs Chippy nipped into the room and farted?