We will be away narrowboating next week, and I have been urged to a point that is now close to nagging. The activity, that I have been encouraged to perform, is clipping the dogs faces.* So far I have managed to sort out Whiffler's face and toes, and Hobson is now looking gorgeous with his neatly clipped face too. ** This morning it was The Rat's turn. After fifteen minutes I was able to report that she looks marginally less feral, and can now actually see where she is going. I really do need to clip back their bodies too, but I am unlikely to find time to do that before next Tuesday.
I then wandered outside and made a start on tidying up the carport and the grassy area that has recently been cleared of the tree trunk. I raked up more of the sawdust, and schlepped it up to the compost bins in the orchard.
Next on my list was a spot of lawn mowing. I used the beast*** to tidy up the verges in front of the house. These hadn't been cut for more than a month and were looking rather unkempt. Fortunately they had recovered from the activities of the tree surgeon and his crew, and this cut has made them look much better.
I then swapped the beast for the Mountfield, and spent the rest of the morning mowing the lawn at the front of the house. I know that it will be a few months before the grass in front of the garage recovers from the tree felling, but I am trying to convince myself that the gardens at the front are almost presentable ... Well, they will be, once I get the hedges cut.
In the afternoon we hitched the trailer to the car and took a load of the punky ash to the tip. Our trip was on a weekday and we expected to breeze in, offload our rubbish, and be away within a few minutes. How wrong we were! There was a queue of cars on the road to the tip, and it was over twenty minutes before we pulled up by the skips.
At that point we learnt that "Technically" our wood wasn't actually regarded as wood, and needed to be deposited in the green waste skip, rather than the wood skip.**** We also learnt that the chaos had been as a result of an operational hold-up while a full skip was swapped with an empty replacement.
I would like to say that our return from the tip was uneventful, but, a couple of miles from home, I heard a scraping sound. I stopped to investigate and found that our trailer's light board had become detached and was being dragged along the road. It seemed undamaged, so I lashed it to the back of the trailer and on we drove.
Our return journey included a minor detour to the local trading estate where we picked up another six pallets from the Removals and Storage firm that is based there. These will be used to construct another log storage bay in the carport.
We arrived home at about four o'clock and I really fancied just collapsing on the settee, but 30% had arranged for us to meet up with Rosie, Jim, Gizzy and Jules in Tewkesbury for a curry. After a shower, shave and haircut I felt marginally more human and we hit the road again.
We had a lovely evening at a rather good Indian Restaurant, and fortunately it was neither late nor boozy. We were home just after ten o'clock, and I was finally able to collapse on the sofa!
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* as a bare minimum
** I don't need to worry about Traitorous Bastard, as he has recently been clipped at the grooming school.
*** An old McCulloch mower that I use on the rougher ares of grass i.e. the orchard and verges
**** Apparently this is for things that are made from wood, rather than wood in its more natural state i.e. pieces of a tree!
out for a curry in Tewkesbury
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