What have you been doing today?

[Mottie]

Opened a letter today and found I had received a refund on the road tax for the A3 that we just sold. Was only £35 a year so we got £20.41 refund. Not much towards the new one when you consider its replacement is going to cost £620 a year to tax, straight into the governments coffers. Happy to help….

 

[Mottie]

I harvested my protected corn last week and I deliberately left one side of the cage open. Mr Badger has been in and sniffing about but no easy pickings for him this year. Not from me, anyway.

Picked some veg - not really needed but picked it before it spoils. Tomatoes, cooking apples, cucumbers, butternut squash and my entire aubergine harvest of one! I put them on my front wall for neighbours to help themselves. One of my allotment neighbours left me a pot of blackberries in my greenhouse. These blackberries are not your normal ones. They are bigger, juicer and sweeter than the wild ones you get as they are cultivated blackberries. They are very heavy cropping and they have no thorns either. I’ve taken a dozen cuttings from them and they are coming along well in my greenhouse. I plan to have a row of them next year on my plot.

 

[Mottie]

DiL got quoted £505 by a local garage to replace the timing belt and water pump on her Picasso. It’s an easy job to do, no special tools needed so I said I’d look at it for her. She also mentioned she's got a bit of a clutch judder and a banging sound when she pulls away. They've gone away for a few days so I told them to drop it round to me. I stripped it down outside my garage at home. In stripping it down, I found the cause of the judder and banging - the front engine mount was split in two! I’ve ordered the parts - cam belt kit, water pump, gallon of antifreeze and an engine mounting from GSF. With the 22% 'August discount’ the parts have come to £126 all in. Picking the parts up tomorrow morning and I should have it back together by lunch time. Hopefully!

 

[fillyboy]

DiL got quoted £505 by a local garage to replace the timing belt and water pump on her Picasso. It’s an easy job to do, no special tools needed so I said I’d look at it for her. She also mentioned she's got a bit of a clutch judder and a banging sound when she pulls away. They've gone away for a few days so I told them to drop it round to me. I stripped it down outside my garage at home. In stripping it down, I found the cause of the judder and banging - the front engine mount was split in two! I’ve ordered the parts - cam belt kit, water pump, gallon of antifreeze and an engine mounting from GSF. With the 22% 'August discount’ the parts have come to £126 all in. Picking the parts up tomorrow morning and I should have it back together by lunch time. Hopefully!

Easiest 300 quid you've earned, if you weren't such a nice bloke.

 

[Mottie]

Easiest 300 quid you've earned, if you weren't such a nice bloke.

lol. I was going to add that to my post. I’ll just settle for the normal thank you - a nice bottle of wine!

 

[Mottie]

I found the cause of the judder and banging - the front engine mount was split in two! I’ve ordered the parts - cam belt kit, water pump, gallon of antifreeze and an engine mounting from GSF. With the 22% 'August discount’ the parts have come to £126 all in. Picking the parts up tomorrow morning and I should have it back together by lunch time. Hopefully!

All done! But I’m covered in grease, got it in my fingerprints, under my nails, in my hair and I’ve been sweating like a b'stard. A quick lunch, put my tools away, tidy up the garage, and straight in the shower. Shower! It’s not even Sunday!

 

[Mottie]

After fixing the DiL's car, I thought I’d give it a clean out before running it back to their house so it’s there for her when they come back from holiday. Clean out? It was more like a muck out - I've seen cleaner stables than the floor and seats of that car - I put a seat cover and floor mat on it to keep my boots and overalls clean! I've never seen so many sweets and biscuits trampled into the rubber mats. Gummy bears were the worse to get out. I had to take them out, soak them with hot soapy water and then blast them off using the highest setting on my Karcher. Most common biscuit - Oreo’s, they were bloody everywhere. I filled a bucket with the crap I took out of it. When I told Mrs Mottie, she went off on one - at me! She said she's got two kids, runs a house, goes to work, when does she get the time or the opportunity to clean a car out? Women - they just band together, don’t they?

 

[Odds]

Digging.
Weeding.
Digging and weeding.
Planting.

Taking a break from all the D&W, i was sat on a bench down the road from H.H, when i leant back to enjoy a moment of Summer sun and saw a bird slowly circling high in the clear blue sky...a big bird...a bloody big bird. It circled lower, intent on a perch in a tall conifer and i could see it had a deep brown coat and feathered wingtips. A n eagle? The lady, Rebecca, ruler of H.H and all she surveyed, had told me a Golden Eagle sometimes paid a visit but i bestowed a sceptical eye on her story...til today. It certainly wasn't a Red Kite, which do fly by sometimes, nor was it a sparrowhawk, being much larger, so i can safely say i've finally seen an eagle in t'wild.
No use taking a snap with my puny camera phone since all it would show is a brown dot amidst a sea of green.
I know, right, you don't believe me either.

I know what i saw, and i'm okay with that.

 

[Highway Man]

Digging.
Weeding.
Digging and weeding.
Planting.

Taking a break from all the D&W, i was sat on a bench down the road from H.H, when i leant back to enjoy a moment of Summer sun and saw a bird slowly circling high in the clear blue sky...a big bird...a bloody big bird. It circled lower, intent on a perch in a tall conifer and i could see it had a deep brown coat and feathered wingtips. A n eagle? The lady, Rebecca, ruler of H.H and all she surveyed, had told me a Golden Eagle sometimes paid a visit but i bestowed a sceptical eye on her story...til today. It certainly wasn't a Red Kite, which do fly by sometimes, nor was it a sparrowhawk, being much larger, so i can safely say i've finally seen an eagle in t'wild.
No use taking a snap with my puny camera phone since all it would show is a brown dot amidst a sea of green.
I know, right, you don't believe me either.

I know what i saw, and i'm okay with that.

Which part of the country did you see it?

 

[Mottie]

Run the DiL's car back to Chelmsford after fixing and mucking it out - it’ll be ready for her to go to work in on Monday, when they get home. Had to get Mrs Mottie to drive it as I froze my insurance last month when I sold the A3 and won’t be reinstating it until we get the Tucson in September so I have no insurance to drive other vehicles. She can drive other cars on her policy and I’m also a named driver on hers so I drove the Golf. After we dropped it off we parked the Golf up too and walked over to Oaklands park and had lunch in the Hive cafe.

This evening I went over the allotment, I haven’t been for a few days and feck me, have the weeds sprung up! I pulled up a rather large beetroot - might be a bit woody when I cook it though. My pumpkin patch is coming to an end, 'Big Boi' is now 145cm circumference. Might make 150 by the end of of the season.

 

[Mottie]

A couple of friends of ours are doing a boot sale tomorrow and asked us if we fancied joining them. We said yes so I’ve been rooting round the loft, my garage and the shed in my mums garden and loading up the golf. Got a few household items but most of the stuff is from my workshop when I sold it. Vacuum cleaner, pressure washer, bench grinder, socket sets, a couple of hand driers, Pat tester, bike stands, engine support cradles, pullers, spring compressors, many, many special tools that I’m just never going to use again, 8 pairs of new steel toe-cap boots and at least 50 - 60 pairs of overalls. All gotta go. I've made a prediction to Mrs Mottie who my first customer will be - my mate who won't be able to resist some of my tools. Din't know what one we are going to yet - he'll let us know when we meet him at 4.30 tomorrow morning.

 

[Munroast]

emptied our compost bin today and bagged it all up - amongst the compst was a pair of glasses that I must have lost, I filled this bin probably 23/24 so lets say they have been in there 18 months - washed them and they are absolutely as good as new - isn't plastic amazing

 

[Mottie]

Just made my sammiches for breakfast tomorrow at the boot sale. Egg & bacon. Fried the eggs and bacon first then, most important, let them go cold then make the sandwich as normal. Was tempted to eat them tonight and make another couple but I resisted.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Aside from towing us and the caravan back to home....

We had chosen a pitch, where Freeview reception was marginal, so I tried to deploy our old sat system and receiver, only to find much of the SD channels on sat, had been switched off. Whilst away, I managed to track down a suitable HD receiver, from someone local to home, and arranged to collect it today, once back home, for the princely sum of £10. I dropped the caravan off, then flew over to collect that, the owner said he'd bought it, and never managed to fathom out how to set it up, so basically new.

So, I then spent my entire afternoon, trying to fathom it out, with little success, until some five hours later, I finally found the LNB power setting by default, was set to 'off'. Then I got perfect reception, though not the right satellite. Some more tweaking needed tomorrow. I'm not surprised the seller couldn't get it working at all - the manual supplied with it, bore little relationship to the actual menus.

 

[Mottie]

Just made my sammiches for breakfast tomorrow at the boot sale. Egg & bacon. Fried the eggs and bacon first then, most important, let them go cold then make the sandwich as normal. Was tempted to eat them tonight and make another couple but I resisted.

Had a great time. We ended up going to Dunton boot sale. Still came home with about a third of what we went with. After knocking off our £12 entrance fee, we walked away with £422.00 profit - all from tools that I was never going to use again.

I've made a prediction to Mrs Mottie who my first customer will be - my mate who won't be able to resist some of my tools.

I got £90 of that total from my mate! He got well over 400 quids worth of tools so he was happy. Happier than his wife, anyway!