A simple job, aye right :-)

I stopped giving ‘wee dug’ bones years ago cos Molly just doesn’t no when to stop, no matter how big the bone is she’ll gnaw away at it until it’s vanished, growling fiercely if you try and remove it from her vice like grip. Now I guess that’s quite normal behaviour and for a regular sized dug would be fine but she would literally chew away until she burst or at least chew away until she was the size of and as hard as a small barrel She would then become constipated and be unable to pooh for days. Sure she would try but nothing would come out and when it did, after several days I’d marvel at the size of her deposit Hope you’re no reading this over breakfast and if you are I apologise. Anyway the bone from Sunday’s lamb roast was just too good not to share with my faithful companion so much to her delight I gave it to her yesterday afternoon outside. At least then she’d not be eating it on my bed or sofa and I could remove it from her and put it in an outside bin before she went solid about the waist.

Apart from her vanishing with it, this seemed to go to plan and I manged to find her and distract her long enough to remove the bone by loosing off a few rounds with a shotgun. The one thing Molly loves above all else is the prospect of me shooting something, the very act of unlocking my gun cabinet will usually have her by my side whining in seconds. Obviously cos she was outdoors somewhere I actually had to fire the gun at some fictitious pigeon before for she came charging round the house whereupon I retraced her steps and deposited the remnants of Sunday dinner in the bin.

Trouble is wee dug has been getting up every couple of hours since and whining at the back door to go and look for her bone Still, there’s some bits of meat left from my ‘left over’ feast last night that I can add into her dinner tonight, hopefully that’ll give me peace and a better night’s sleep. Not that I’d have had a great one anyway, I seldom do, especially the night before returning to work. I’m actually quite excited about the prospect, barring my fortnight in dry dock I’ve not worked for months, between broken ribs, docking and holidays I’ve not actually worked on the Raasay route since August!!! Not that that is unusual for the rest of the country with furlough and all but it does feel strange. Hope I can remember how to shutdown the ferry tonight then start her up in the morning

Turned into an epic

I’ll not be ‘turning to’ until late afternoon right enough so I’ll have time to do a few more Land Rover, croft related tasks, the first of which will be to find Rodney, Bismarck and Tirpitz who spent the night ‘off the radar’ and never came home last night. Then I guess I’ll clear up the bomb site that is my workshop, yesterday’s simple task of getting my front lights working turning into ‘major surgery’.

   

The day getting off to a fine if not greyish start which set the tone for the day so I didn’t feel so bad at being inside the shed all day working on my lights.

 

The left hand side loom to the front I’d already joined to the original one yesterday so before refitting the headlamps I buffed up the Perspex lens with toothpaste. Basically cos that is all I could find, the best thing I’ve found for repairing glazed plastic headlamps is Duraglit  or Brasso

but I had neither. You need something that is ever so slightly abrasive and I’ve found Duraglit ideal for removing tiny scratches on glasses, lenses and CD’s that jump. T cut also works but after hours of fruitlessly searching for mine (I have now just remembered where it is) I went and raided my bathroom for some toothpaste, it too is like a very fine abrasive paste and I’ve used it in the past for gently lapping in diving compressor valves. Sure you can actually buy special kits for refurbishing faded headlamps but I guess they’re just rebranded metal polish or something.

   

All that went ‘damn fine splendid’ until I came to the drivers side where I couldn’t easily remove the old loom to join it to the new one. It was only a few inches short right enough and I could have just spliced in a new section but I’d planned to fit a new outer wing anyway. The old one had a dent in it which would have meant removing it to repair and I wanted to get rid of the side repeater lamp and it’s hole. Rather than fiddle about blind with spanners I just cut the wing off at the seam and removed the now easily accessible nuts and bolts with a socket and ratchet or grinder if they were seized, which one or two were.

  

It was once the outer wing was removed that I noticed the large hole in the galvanised inner wing so I removed that with a view to repairing it. Another boodly epic cos you have to remove everything that is attached to it in the engine bay first. I gotta say, I was tempted to fit new ones. The later plastic ones are about £110 each but I figured I could effect a reasonable and invisible repair by welding them (chances are the left hand one is the same) then giving them a good painting prior to refitting.

Almost 9:00am now, found the wee piggy’s about half a mile away grubbing about in the birch wood looking very pleased to see me, or at least the feed bucket.

  

Molly greeted them by trying to bite their ears and well all trundled back to the croft,

  

the crows having stolen another three apples and the deer watching on with amusement

Exhausted :-)

Almost 8:00am and that’s me not even finished the first cup of coffee let alone started the second pot Not only that I didn’t have my 3:00AM banana and hot chocolate. Nope, I was in my bed ‘tired and shagged out after a long squawk before 9:00PM

I’ve been out, dealt with the chooks and let the pigs out right enough and I guess I’ll put another coat of paint around my radiator frame which I hope to fit later but for now I’m just having a leisurely start to the day.

   

Unlike these three bees that were busy collecting nectar before I’d even properly woken up. Sure the pictures are rubbish but was really surprised to see them out on such a damp cool morning as I went to let the boys out.

Tirpitz, Bismarck and Rodney have been cooped up on the croft for far too long. I usually have them ‘free ranging’ after a couple of weeks but for one reason and another they’ve been in an enclosure on the croft for months.

First off there were larger pigs on the loose, then I was away once or twice and didn’t want them charging round the North End unattended. I also didn’t want them destroying my neighbour’s polytunnel again, somebody else’s had already done that once However when I went to feed the wee darlings yesterday I needed to dig a small drain to divert water into a drain. The deluges from the previous days had created a lot of surface water around the gate to their field.

  

This also had the effect of washing the contents of their toilet into the area where I was feeding them. So, that’s it I thought, time to let em out Free at last, the pigs were most impressed.

With them out of the way, the gates closed and me making a mental note to go and fix the neighbour’s gate I set about the Land Rover radiator again. My modification having made the radiator core slightly larger.

  

Even using a couple of ratchet straps to squeeze it together I couldn’t quite bolt the frame together cos of the captive nuts in the corner. So, I cut the rounded corner off the frame and made a square one out of angle iron, tapping it M8 so I could put bolts in pointing ‘up the way’.

  

Leaving the paint to dry I turned my attention to the exhaust, realizing then just how painful my rib had been whilst I was crawling underneath the ‘Old Girl’

  

Molly taking up her ‘prime position’ for the first time in two and a half years

With the first two sections fitted after making a couple of brackets I loosely ‘cable tied’ the last section in place whilst I awaited a new exhaust ring to join the new pipes.

Returning once more to the radiator and intercooler,

 

which is when I noticed that the two ‘stand offs’ for the radiator frame were about 30mm too high and I couldn’t close the bonnet Well, I’ve since hacked those off and come up with a plan whilst in bed, but at the time I left it and went to repair my neighbour’s gate.

 

Just in time hey

Well, it’s 9:00AM now, the third cup of coffee is finished, the second pot brewing and I’d better go do some work.