A dream come true :-)

Actually I should have called this post ‘what is the point of hamsters’ for our ‘rodent guest’ has just woken up and will probably prevent me sleeping yet again 🙂 I’m sure they have their place out there in the wild but what is the point of a pet that sleeps all day and keeps you wakened all night??? Seriously what’s that all about, I’m not really a ‘pet person’, I’m not even a ‘dog person’, don’t laugh 🙂 No, I prefer my animals in the wild or on the plate next to the spuds 🙂 OK, I can see how they bring hours of pleasure to some people, teach others how to be responsible, provide comfort and company or even a focal point in the living room. I can understand that, I can even comprehend why people get suckered into thinking they own a cat but this hamster thing has got me beat.

Sure wee Dusty is cute enough, and we were asked if it would be OK to foster him as well as his owners, but you don’t see him all day as he’s fast asleep in the child’s bedroom. Then, come 22:00 he’s ‘up and out’ starting off his day by cleaning and sharpening his teeth on the bars of his cage for about half an hour. An incessant grinding accentuated by the bell like shape of the plastic lid that is invariably louder than the TV 😦

 

Of course the child can’t sleep so Dusty comes downstairs in the living room to spend the next six or eight hours running a marathon in his squeaky treadmill or gnawing at his bars 😦

Not only that but we’ve another one arriving next week 🙂 Why can’t people buy gerbils 🙂 Don’t tell me they’re nocturnal too only I remember my brother having one and I’m sure it wasn’t.

Anyway, where was  before Dusty distracted me, well in bed until 7:00am at least savouring the lack of pain in my back for one. After that it was up and eventually out, once I’d done the usual pot of coffee and puter stuff. Feeding everyone then leading out the three Tamworth piglets onto the hill. It really is a pleasure to watch them savouring their freedom, not that they’re particularly short of space on the croft but the ‘big wide world’ has so much more to offer an inquisitive wee pig. In fact they were so excited that the didn’t finish their feed and Jamie Lea scoffed it whilst they shot off down the road at great speed.

That done and my fried breakfast finished I decided to have another go at ‘speaking to my inverter’ thanks to lots of advice given me here  http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,17813.0.html , on the blog and via a couple of PM’s on the Navitron site.

This ‘IT’ thing certainly pi55es me off at times but it never ceases to impress me. Twenty three years ago if I wanted to speak to someone I had to drive eleven miles and use a public phone. Now I come out of my shed plonk my laptop on top of a pig ark and I’m on the web, then just use my mobile to phone a complete stranger for advice, thanks Eric 🙂 Not only that but I’m moaning that it’s only a 2g signal and why can’t I use it in the shed, but that’s human nature for you 🙂

At the end of the day I still haven’t sorted it but at least I feel now that I’m on the right track as more helpful advice comes flooding in from people all over the world.

MOT preparation

All my adult life I’ve dreamt of having a shed large enough to get a vehicle in, no not just a garage but a proper shed with a concrete floor. A shed large enough for you to walk around, pull off all the wheels and still have room to swing a cat. Well I’ve got one now, in fact I’ve had one since the end of April and it’s taken me eight weeks to put my Land Rover inside it 🙂

I think I’ve been scared of doing it in case it didn’t fit or I’d be disappointed or something, just the other day I was messing about in the rain with my power steering box!!!!

 

OK, part of it has been that all my tools are still at http://www.iosea.co.uk/3sarnish.shtml and I didn’t want to dirty the floor before sealing it, but today I did it. I put the Old Girl in the shed to do some work for the impending MOT.

Jacked her up using my special shaped bit of wood that fits snugly under the axle allowing you to do it and keep the vehicle on an even keel.

That was as far as I got, the excitement was just too much for me, I checked the front wheel bearings and swivel housings and left it there. To be honest I was in shock that the swivel bearings and wheel bearings were not in need of adjustment. The suspension on this truck takes a severe hammering daily up and down ‘Calum’s road’ so I put its continuing reliability down to the sealed swivel gaiters and ‘one shot grease’ but more of that later.

For now I went over to the ‘Old Schoolhouse’ at Torran to cut the grass for the first time in a month, a job I was hoping that my boy would do. Still, he’s on his hols, his pal is here and they’re having a great time so I did it myself.

 

Well almost 🙂 Of course when I got there the brush cutter wouldn’t start, I couldn’t find a plug key and had to return home for a fresh spark plug but we got there in the end. The satisfaction of cutting a months worth of growth being marred when I killed a slow worm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguis_fragilis with the strimmer 😦

I don’t have any qualms about killing anything that I’m going to eat or shooting vermin like crows but I hate to see creatures killed unnecessarily and taking this ones life really pi55ed me off. For a start I didn’t even know you got them on Raasay and the last time I saw one was in Tenby around 1966. This one was, or at least seemed to me to be a particularly fine specimen and had been unfortunate enough just to have his head in the wrong place at the wrong time 😦

    

Although it looks very much like a snake a slow worm is in fact a lizard without legs, the second picture on the right quite clearly showing where the body ends and the tail starts. Slow worms also have proper eyelids and some even have ears.

With most of the lawn cut, the batteries, turbine and generator checked I headed home before the traffic 🙂

Though I did get stuck in traffic on the way home 🙂 Meeting these two ‘rednecks’ and their ‘responsible 21 year adult’ following closely behind with the ammunition and crash helmets 🙂

and the pedestrians were a nightmare 🙂