It’s that time of year again when life focuses on preparing the garden and the associated outdoor furniture for the coming Summer.
Just look at the difference!
There are few things in life more satisfying than attacking an algae covered piece of furniture with Karcher’s finest jet washer.
Then came time to jet wash the patio. It’s quite a big patio and it was pretty badly covered in algae so it took a while. The other problem is that the jet washer is so powerful it started ripping up all the grouting so I’m going to have to do something about that 🙁
I don’t think I’ll jet wash the patio again though – I’ll use my funky Ryobi battery powered knapsack sprayer which is an absolutely beautiful piece of kit. If you’ve ever had to use a knapsack sprayer with the pumpy handle thing then you’ll know what a pain it is. Battery powered knapsack sprayers are the future kids. Hmmmm, went off on a bit of a tangent there – anyway – into my knapsack sprayer I’ll put some “wet and forget” and spray the patio every 3 months which should keep the algae at bay. We’ll see.
Ever since we kept chickens I’ve been on the hunt for the elusive perfect poached egg. The freshness is definitely important but I also read something recently that made me wonder. We all assume that an egg is made up of a yolk and the white. However, it seems not all white is white. Some of it is very runny and that’s the bit that makes your poached eggs all messy. So some chef suggested putting the egg into a strainer first, to get rid of the runny bit.
So I did
I’m pretty impressed with the one on the left.
Oh and keto bread….it’s a definite meh from me but if you absolutely have to have something on toast and you’re “low-carbing” then it’ll do.
Emma and I nipped into town to see Charlie and Ellie. Food was consumed and then it got messy. As is usual with Emma and I once we have a few drinks all caution is thrown to the wind and we just went mental. Fun day out though
Aside from making completely new fence panels it also seems I’m quite the dab hand at taking old knackered fence panels and bringing them back to life
I had to use my planer to take 20+ years worth of weathering off the fence panel. Then replace one of the back support thingys with some new 2×1 and finally give the whole thing a coating of fence paint – all of which was accomplished with the help of a fine bottle of Burgundy that can be seen in the background. Better thing…Burgundy…Workshop…Agog to Learn
At some point last year me and Uncle Chris were messing about with my tractor adjusting the steering and we spotted that the drive belt had lots of cracks in it and was pretty badly perished in places. It was still working but a worst case scenario is that it would snap whilst mowing the front garden and then I’d have to push it miles to get it back to my workshop…and this tractor is pretty bloody heavy.
So we took it apart
I did a bit of research to find out which belt size I needed and popped down to a local belts and bearings workshop type place and bought one for £20 rather than the £45 that most mower sites were after. Then Winter arrived and it got cold. I hunkered down for the Winter hibernating in a nice warm house rather than rolling around on the frozen concrete floor of my workshop.
Winter came to an end and the weather suddenly picked up in February and it was positively Spring like. I gave Uncle Chris a call, he happened to be free so he came over and we set to it.
I’ve never had my tractor in quite so many pieces so it was a relief to have Chris with me. The drive belt is quite a bugger to replace as you have to take so many bits and pieces off the chassis and engine to release it. Release it we did however, eventually.
Putting the new one on was a piece of cake and we just went backwards through everything we had previously done and it was back together in no time. Fired up the engine and tried to drive it….nothing. I then realised I’d disengaged the clutch when we were moving it around the workshop. Re-engaged the clutch and it started moving, but very, very slowly.
That belt should not be hanging beneath the pulley like that
After a bit of looking and a bit of thinking we decided we’d gone the wrong way around a pulley. Moved the belt across to the other side, tensioned it up again and all was marvelous. The tractor was flying along – I’d be mowing again in no time. Uncle Chris had to leave at this point and I was pretty tired so we knocked off for the day and I’d finish putting it back together again a few days later.
A few days later came and Oli and I went down to the workshop to finish off putting it together. It was only a few minutes before we realised the path the belt was taking was wrong. It would rub against the grass chute when the cutting deck was lifted which would damage both the grass chute and the belt. So I put the belt back to its original position and tried to make it as tense as possible but nothing I did was working.
I eventually concluded that I had the wrong belt. I double checked the writing on the new belt and it was exactly what I asked for. I disassembled the tractor again to get the belt off [ much quicker second time around ] and compared the new belt to the old one. Exactly the same size! I was perplexed at this point. I consulted online mower forums and made a post about my predicament. I’d done everything right. So I just got more and more confused.
Eventually I went back to the belts and bearings supplier and had a long chat with the fellow there. He was a bit bemused too but suggested I try a belt that is 1 inch smaller. He happened to have one in stock so off I popped with it and fitted it pretty quickly since I was now *very* familiar with the process. It was like night and day! The tension was perfect, the routing avoided the grass chute. It was a thing of beauty.
I called the chap at the belt shop and ordered a Kevlar wrapped belt of the same size and then went along and paid for the two belts. The belt that he loaned me is still on the tractor and the Kevlar belt is waiting until I next tear down the tractor and then I’ll do a replacement.
I’m still struggling to understand why everything on the internet [ possible echo chamber going on ] is telling me one size, and in reality I had to buy one an inch shorter. Ho hum. It’s fixed now and I’m happy again.
We’ve always been somewhat plagued with moles. They overran the front garden for quite a long time but I think I got them all. Quite recently the back garden has been absolutely wrecked by them. I think it’s because houses are being built all around us and they’re all being disturbed and driven to my garden. I was getting quite depressed about – they really were popping up everywhere and I was having no luck catching them.
I bought some new mole traps and watched a couple of YouTube videos and one was quite a different approach from what I’d previously tried. So I thought I’d give it a go
First time!
On my very first try of the new technique I bagged one.
I then cleared all the molehills aand waited with baited breath to see if anymore appeared. They did. Traps went down again and I bagged two more. No more mole hills have appeared since so I think I’m mole free – for now.
In case you’re wondering about the new technique…simply clear the mole hill, find out where the hole comes to the surface and determine the direction of the run, peel the turf back and get your duffus trap in there. Check back 12 hrs later.
Every few years JC and I have a game of chess. We must have done it using computers or something last time because we didn’t have quite so much confusion at the start of a game in the past, but now that we’re using chat and doing proper chess notation like Qe2 and all that we’re making a right pigs ear of it.
Several phone calls have taken place along the lines of “oi, the bloody queen can’t do that – it’s not a horse you know” and such.
Anyway, we’re off and running – Jason usually beats me – so we’ll see.
About eighteen years ago my little girl appeared in the world. A little bundle of joy that we drove back from the hospital at about ten miles an hour and then the reality of what we’d done set in.
Much fun over the years – many trials and tribulations and so much happening that there’s even a dedicated blog for her, and her brother.
But now, somehow, unbelievably, she’ll be turning 18.
Quite a long time ago I left Facebook. Totally had enough of seeing people complain about pretty much anything. Then my office chair broke after 20 years of faithful service. I decided I wanted to get myself a Herman Miller Aeron chair like I always used to sit on at Sky. This proved pretty tricky since there were very few on eBay and they were all quite expensive. Emma kept showing me Aeron chairs on Facebook Marketplace and so eventually I gave in and set up another Facebook account. Everyone I messaged seemed to “ignore” me until I realised the messages weren’t being sent because I had no FB friends. So then I had to start adding friends again and getting sucked back in. But, eventually, I bought my Herman Miller Aeron chair and all was well [ ish , turns out it isn’t as comfortable as I remember] with the world.
“Alright Darren, that’s all fascinating but what about the Bang bang chicken” I hear you all cry. Well, in the process of accruing friends on Facebook I must have started following some recipe writing people. They posted a link to Bang bang chicken and I thought “Oi, oi, let’s give this a go”. Desiccated coconut, chicken, flour, Sriracha, sweet chilli sauce and spicy mayo – and voila
I enjoy cooking up a bit of chicken in some home made sauce and then serving it with a ramekin of rice and maybe some soy cooked green beans with a sesame seed finish. I’ve recently started experimenting with coating the chicken in self raising flour before pan frying it and adding it into the sauce. Turns out, as far as the kids are concerned, that this is a proper winner winner chicken dinner. They declared it to be the best one yet – and who am I to argue with that?
It was with a heavy heart that I had to contact my friends in London and tell them I wouldn’t be able to make it down for a visit. An even heavier heart [ if that were possible ] became apparent when I had to tell my Cambridge friends that I wouldn’t be able to attend the Aussie Pink Floyd gig at the Royal Albert Hall [ The ROYAL ALBERT HALL god damnit ] and all because BIM decided to have the graduation ceremony on the same random Tuesday in November.
Nothing. Ever. Happens. On. Tuesdays. Ever!
Anyway – it was all worth it to watch my beloved nephew spend about ten seconds walking across a stage to collect a graduation tie pin. Seriously. A tie pin.
After the graduation we went for some wonderful Tapas down a back street of Manchester near some bins and then drank the night away at Afflecks and Brown. The next day Emma and I had a mooch around Manchester. I bought my traditional sausage selection from the Xmas market along with a bag of Macaroons and it was with much shame that I bought two pairs of gloves from Primark for £3. Seriously – how can they make two pairs of gloves for £3.
I was once of the opinion that you simply couldn’t get a better bowl of soup than some home made French Onion soup cooked slowly for several hours to really bring out the sugars and flavours in the onion.
Turns out I was wrong.
With the addition of a humble Greggs sausage roll it just takes it to the next level of culinary sophistication.
A long time ago I met a fellow in a field and took him into the woods. Let’s call him Ken, mainly because that’s his name. We were both walking our dogs [ dogging if you will ] and he didn’t realise that Jacobs wood was a public amenity so I showed him around a little. In that usual way that happens whereby once you meet somebody you keep randomly bumping into them I met him several times after. Warbreck garden centre, on the lane outside my house and eventually in the pub. It was on one occasion of meeting him in The Plough that he happened to start talking about one of his favourite wines, The Chocolate Block. After some investigation I found you could buy it at Majestic Wine Warehouse and added it to my list of crap to do to go and find this wine and try it out.
A while later I was shopping at Booths for a Burgundy so that I could create a venison bourguignon and was amazed to find a bottle of The Chocolate Block. So I bought it. Then drank it. It was pretty good. I haven’t bought one since so maybe not that amazing.
Crazy decanter – works fine for a while but the last bit of liquid comes flying out
A recipe came up on Facebook or something and I thought “baked pear, Stilton and honey – what’s not to like.
So off I went to the shops. Bought some pears, bought some Stilton, bought some honey just in case since I hadn’t bothered to check if we had any and didn’t worry about the walnuts since always have them in the house.
The end result was fantastic – how can you not like a baked pear stuffed with a mixture of melted Stilton and honey and walnuts all topped off with a pinch of cinnamon. It’s making my mouth water just writing about it.
My mother, uncle and I all headed into Manchester to witness a plea. Long story about why we had to do this which I’ll not go into. But along the way we came across the Paddington bench in Spinningfields and formed a happy memory, which makes it all worthwhile. Afterwards we had a little wine and tapas and made our way home.
When we remodelled the driveway there were some casualties. Namely several fence panels that had over the years been ravaged by the elements and by ground ivy. So rather than buying new fence panels at ridiculous post pandemic prices, I thought I’d make my own.
A few of the 1.8m rough sawn 100×18 softwood planks that will be making part of my fence panel
I took some measurements off one of the old weather damaged fence panels and set up my trusty mitre saw to do some cuts.
Chopped in half ready to have the top angle cut out.
When I first started building a panel I would chop all the planks in half. Then I’d set the angle on the mitre saw, then I’d chop individual planks one at a time always measuring and remeasuring the place where the cut is going to be.
By the time I’d got to my 5th fence panel I’d built a rudimentary jig to hold the planks and was cutting through them 3 or 4 at a time. It got a lot faster to build each panel!
The first ever fence panel. It’s not completely finished as I had three supports across the back and there’s only two in the picture above.
In a similar vein when it came to assembling the panel I was pretty slow for the first few, but after each panel I learned a new time saving trick and also got a bit more accurate so the later panels were much faster to put together and a lot straighter.
See that workbench the fence panel is resting on? I built that workbench and put castors on it and everything. Thing of beauty.
Finally I got around to digging some holes, buying some 75×75 fence posts and a few bags of postfix. I know hand mixing concrete apparently makes for a better, more secure fence post but you just can’t argue with the simplicity of “dig a hole, throw some water in, add your fence post, throw some postfix in and maybe a bit more water and you’re done”
The more or less finished job. I had to put a few more panels up off to the left of the picture above but you get the idea. The fence panel planks have been pressure treated to greater or lesser degrees which is why there is some colour variation but I suspect they’ll all fade to the same colour after a year or two. I don’t really mind though, quite like the multi coloured fence panels.
Quite a long time ago, before we went sailing in Croatia, I started painting the flat roof that the lazy bastard roofer couldn’t be bothered finishing. It began here
Well finally….finally….absolutely finally I got around to finishing it off. It was an enormous relief – something that had been preying on my mind for quite a while so I finally got myself together and did the final touch up under the roof-lights. It didn’t take long, not half as long as I thought it would, and it’s turned out quite well.
I sat on the roof with a can of Stella or two beneath a beautiful blue sky on a crisp autumnal day and I was truly happy.
Quite a while ago it popped up on the newsfeed on my phone that McDonalds were reintroducing the McRib for a limited time only. I got really quite excited. I put an entry into my calendar for the day that it was to be relaunched and I told everyone that i bumped into that it was coming back.
The day eventually arrived and Amelia had a nail appointment in town so on a wet and rainy October afternoon I dropped her off to have her nails painted and headed to Maccys.
There was a sign outside announcing it was true and it really was back so in I went and made my order.
It was alright, at best. Like so many other write-ups I’ve read I too ended up absolutely covered in the sauce. Napkin after napkin was used to clean myself up and the patty seemed dry. It’s only after reading some other reviews I found out the problem. In the old days they used to dip the patty in the sauce so it got an even covering with not too much and not too little. It seems they changed the way they built this burger by pouring the sauce over the top of the patty and it’s not turned out for the better.
There are secateurs for your little bits of light chopping and pruning.
Then come the loppers for stuff that’s a bit meatier. Maybe branches that are 20mm or 30mm at the most.
After that my option used to be a chainsaw which is often a bit overkill for some of the stuff that I’d cut with it. But now I have a new option! The Ryobi reciprocating saw. Oh yes.
The first job for the saw was chopping through an ivy stem that was attacking one of my tress. Like a hot knife through butter! Yusssssss
