hell of a day was had by all

A truly lovely day for working today.

So first thing in the morning the 50 year old flatbed lorry went up the drive with me and Taliesin "on the bridge" of the Starship Bedford.

That was after the trailer was moved to be in position to be loaded with stuff for the recycling place. Naturally Tallie hitched the 16 foot trailer, did a three point turn in the yard, reversed the trailer between a couple of trucks and down between two buildings where it could be loaded.

Leaving the crew to it off we went in the Bedford truck.

A leisurely proceed with people smiling (they do that a lot when they see the Bedford) and we were in the builders merchant.

I remembered several things, it has the turning circle of a supertanker and no power steering (what you heave is what you get!!!!) so I remembered to turn round before loading this time.

Couple of tons of aggregate and lots of cement on the back. No one son still not telling why we needed it and we went off for home.

Home being via the petrol station and soon the local bobby had turned up to interrogate me.

"Corr whats that? How old is it? Oh look it's 4x4 bet that was good in the snow!!! Petrol! My god it's petrol!!!"

Meanwhile a second group of admirers had built up who had "driven one of those in the army"

In all this excitement I sort of managed not to notice that 50 quid had gone into the tank and not made much of an impression on the gauge.

Extracting ourselves, off we went for home. A lovely leisurely drive through town followed by a little trundle through the lanes with the 4x4ites and Volvoscenti not rushing forwards expecting me to get out of their way immediately. Instead it was take to the fields caring not that this involved jumping hedges, crunching into 5 bar gates or flying off 10 foot drops.

Through the village and on the the 20% incline with the 6 cylinder orchestra singing happily at a steady 12 mph in second.

Things were not entirely free of drama, the heater stuck on. The heater on this generation of truck is a simple affair.

A little hatch in the floor that you open to let in hot air off the exhaust which is running at temperature probably around the 200C mark. This causes things to get a bit warm. It's not so bad for the driver as all this is going on over on the passengers side but also of course you simply open the hinged windscreen a little bit more.

By the time we finished the long climb to the house Tallie was actually hanging out the door and threatening to get spanners and remove it completely!

The trailer was looking a wee bit loaded so that was the next job, except that Tallie decided to take the digger up the field and bury the water pipe, the last 500 M or so anyway.

With him doing that I rounded up the other crew and off we set for the recycling place. Dumped the stuff but collected a load of brownie points by collecting a load of the councils compost bins.

They gave out lots of free compost bins locally and everyone has been chucking them away so I got another 4 from the council depot as we have huge lawns and lots of people so compost is us!!!!!

So far so seriously productive!!

Management meanwhile had decided to empty our cottage ready to use it as a wood store. SO I turned the trailer round again and backed in to position so the accumulated junk could be trailered away.

Of course there was even more to do and back into town for a replacement set of boots for the Branwen. She loves her Doc Martens and I paid "WHAT" for a pair about 3 years ago.

They have just started to fall to bits but to be fair they have been welded to her feet since she had them.

So really if you buy a pair every 3 years that's very very cheap.

Buying our new stove we could probably have found a cheap imported one and bought that for a fraction of what we payed.

Too often you buy cheap things then you find out why....

R