More deluxe pig housing

It’s been a pure peach of a day here just like UK Wind Map said it would, though after yesterdays mist and rain you’d hardly credit it was the same country let alone same month. After the usual bout of feeding I did the school run in the old girl complete with trailer. It’s not like my boy had mountains of home work it’s that I had one and a half oil tanks to collect! One that I’d bought in February during a moment of weekness and half that I’d been given by a friend who’s also into pigs. Half? you may well ask, well I’ve had this notion in my head for quite a while and involves turning small plastic oil tanks into 1 small pig ark and large plastic oil tanks into 2 pig arks.

These ‘Balmoral’ tanks were part of a batch made around 10 years ago out of faulty plastic and are prone to cracking near the seam. A few people on Raasay had affected ones some of which were replaced FOC. Anyway there must be an awful lot of useless non bio degradeable plastic tanks out there and they make perfect pig arks, kennels, wood stores, motor cycle covers, compost bins, hen houses or whatever. My mate must have had the same idea and offered me the spare half as he only needed one so off we went to collect it from Eyre and of course to see how the fine spotty piglets we’d sold him a few weeks ago were doing.

The ‘three little piggies’ were doing just fine and seemed glad to see us, well they would be wouldn’t they as it was feeding time! So after giving them all a scratch we loaded up the base of the tank into the trailer in such a way that we could sit the next complete tank inside. Whilst not actually heavy a morning dew covered oil tank is particularly annoying to move and I imagine it being similar to trying to lift a 150kg dead tuna fish into the back of a pick up truck dressed in wet oil skins and wearing rubber gloves! However eventually we succeeded and headed off to pick up the second whole tank which whilst smaller was even slippier and more difficult due to the extra height and not having anything at all to hold on to. We did eventually manage and then headed home to get busy with the jig saw.

And in no time at all it was converted into yet another designer pig residence.

Complete with small porch to stop the rain dripping in. The rest of the day being spent repairing the horn on the ‘Old girl’

Lucas ‘prince of darkness‘

Anyone who buys a Land Rover for it’s reliability is either bonkers or has very low expectations in life either that or they have sado masochistic tendencies and enjoy being in strange positions coverd in various (usually dirty ) lubricants. Me I bought my first one 30 years ago when there was nothing else and stubbornly refused to move with the times, well apart from a brief spell of sanity in the 90s when I had a Diahatsu 4 Trak. Still like a dose of maleria it keeps recuring and here I am yet again trying to sort out the crappy Lucas electrics. If it’s not the wipers it’s the lights, heater, rear washer or like today the horn or should I say horns because there are 3, an air horn and 2 electric ones. Before you say it’s overloaded they are run through relays and whilst I was sure it was a poor connection, because it affected all the horns I went to the earth first. Needless to say that was not the problem and it took me all afternoon to discover that one of the electric horns was faulty, drawing and all the power so the others would only chirp pathetically. I disconnected said horn and all was sweetness and light so to speak. It had taken me longer to fix the horn than it had done to replace the steering box on Wednesday.

The first bash

Whilst our houshold was enjoying a late evening barbecue the Raasay Village Hall was opening it’s doors for the first public bash an evening of Gaelic song and something else which I can’t remember just now. We would have gone but had other things on so I hope all went well as it’s been a long up hill struggle for all involved with this major project.