Tag Archives: men in sheds

Another quick post

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Sorry about the lack of application but I’ve had another action-packed day.

First off, a lie in, followed by a late breakfast of sausage, bacon, beans and potato cakes. It was an excellent breakfast cooked by my dear, kind wife.

I feel I have to call her that because (a) she is dear to me (b) she is very kind and (c) she is still grumbling that I forced her out of bed to make me breakfast. It was 14 hours ago, can she not forget?

I’m arranging breakfast tomorrow. McDonald’s, eaten in the car on the way to work. We can pretend we’re high-powered executives.

Next, we went to Men in Sheds to have hot cross buns with the old codgers. They are looking forward to Spring. Julia has been hatching plots and extracting help and equipment for the MENCAP garden. We heard the tractor running and watched the plough go up and down on the newly repaired hydraulics.

I didn’t take any pictures because I was feeling miserable and in pain. It was, I suspect, a combination of too much walking the night before, and the thought of returning to the farm.

Whatever it was, a couple of hours later I was feeling much perkier and navigating my way round a bookshop. I have a new Janet Evanovich whodunit to read and a book about Great War tanks. I’m being very careful about book buying these days, as I’m still giving bags of them to charity, and I want to make sure I’m giving more away than I buy.

Finally, we met up for a family meal as my uncle and two of my cousins were down in Peterborough visiting my Dad. It was a convivial party, ending with the male faction taking on the pudding menu as the female contingent looked on and thought virtuous thoughts.

Uncle Tom tried the Gin and Tonic trifle and the rest of us stuck to apple crumbles. The apple crumble was excellent. The trifle, we were told, picked up towards the bottom half. That would be the half with the gin-soaked sponge…

Five and a Half Hours

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As I said yesterday, Julia had a job lined up for me in the afternoon.

It involved going to the farm to collect some stuff for a Mencap Open Day.  There we found geese, a couple of men in a shed and a Ferguson tractor. The tractor had all four wheels on, which was something I hadn’t seen before. It always seems to have one off for some sort of work.

Little grey Fergie
Fergie at Sreveton
Men in Sheds tractor
A few new bits
Ferguson tractor

From there we went to the Garden Centre for a late lunch (both having Bacon Stilton and Mango Chutney paninis with salad and vegetable crisps), dropped stuff off at the gardens then took an hour-long tour of the Ring Road. I didn’t enjoy that last bit.

I took the opportunity of taking a couple of night shots while we were at the gardens – they seemed to work out OK although the autofocus seemed to struggle a bit with the moon. I don’t think it’s ever had to work at a distance of 384,000 km before, so I expect it had a bit of a surprise.

Moon over Nottingham 1
Moon over Nottingham 2
Car Park at Wilford

The Day gets Better

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I’ve just been adding photographs to the post about the attempted break in. As you can see from them, we had a CSI van and beautiful blue skies. I don’t usually go to the garden when people are there but I thought Julia could do with a hand this afternoon. She normally has to travel through town on the bus with two bags of kit as she travels from one job to the next but I thought after the trials of the day she deserved a lift.

I am such a gent. I am also currently unemployed so it seemed the least I could do.

While I was there in the morning I forgot to tell you that Julia had spotted a beautifully marked Green-veined White. I could only get a distant photo with my phone, so I have nothing to show. It’s a common butterfly, but it’s a new one for the garden list and that’s always good.

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Willow arch

Yesterday we had a good few hours, with Bill from Men in Sheds bringing his battery powered saw to help cut up pallets. We now have all the bits cut to make three new benches.

He also  brought four nest boxes in kit form so the group can put them together and paint them. Even better, he’s going to do another 20 for us. This will let us upgrade the existing boxes and leave some to sell towards funds.

Despite the break in it’s been a good week, and the fruit is looking good. All we need to do is stop people stealing it.

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I would have taken more photos, but the batteries ran out. (These were all taken on Wednesday morning, though the post is written on Thursday.)

We were also given a perfectly usable set of 5-a-side goals the school was throwing out, or fruit cage frame, as we now call it.

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The new fruit cage

 

 

 

Little Grey Fergie

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The title sounds like it should be the opening line of a pastoral poem or a well-loved folk song about a faithful little tractor, but as far as I know, nobody has written either. Who knows, after reading this someone may be enthused to do so.

I’m probably influenced by this song of my youth, though it isn’t about tractors.

Ah, it now looks like I’m going to have to eat my words. According to the internet there is a folk song, and a children’s TV series. It’s amazing what you can learn on the net.

They were also the first vehicles to reach the South Pole. As you can see from the picture, they were modified for the trip, but that’s definitely a Fergie snout poking out.

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The men in sheds are currently restoring a little grey Fergie. It looks to be in pretty good condition, with good tyres and quite a lot of good paint. The brackets for the mudguards have rusted and the hydraulics need attention but apart from skimming the cylinder head there is no major work to be done.

To put it another way – it was born in 1952 and despite being older than me has coped better with the ageing process.

We went to visit for tea and biscuits this morning, where I took the pictures. I’ll go back in a few weeks to take more and see if there is any progress.

Reasons to be cheerful

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I’ve been working on my positivity, and I have many reasons to be cheerful. I have my health (well, most of it), I have my own gardening tools and I have plenty of room for books. I also have friends, a tolerant wife and a laptop.

What more could I want?

Well, I suppose the joints and bladder of youth would be handy, but I’d probably have to be ambitious and hard-working again, which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Anyway, the joint aches started when I was still in my teens due to various accidents, so unless I’m prepared to set the clock back to 1968 and re-live the unpleasantness of my teens it’s not going to happen. In the absence of a time machine it’s not going to happen anyway, but you know what I mean.

That’s another thing to be cheerful about – I don’t have to go through all that teenage angst again.

Mainly, if I’m honest, I’m cheerful about having a digital camera. Compared the the old-fashioned film camera, which could hold thirty six exposures at a time, and where the film needed developing before you could see the results, the digital camera is cheap and efficient. I’m now able to take thirty six shots, instantly see the results and store hundreds of good shots on one small card. Due to the marvels of modern data storage I can also store thousands of poor shots – I really must learn to be more organised.

With a digital camera I can spend my time watchng birds, looking at old buildings and blogging. One day I will have to start earning a living again, but until that happens, I have plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

The pictures I’ve used here are just a selection of my favourites from the last few months.

Adjusting the lathe
Frying sausages
Nuthatce at Rufford Abbey
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Derelict factory in Stoke
Ciabatta with the shadow of rosemary
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Peppermint Creams – the finished article
Poppies and corn wreath

 

 

A very strange day

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Time marches on.

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The day started with a visit to the farm – we are still tidying up as we had an enforced rest over Christmas due to my infection – and continued with a visit to Men in Sheds. They made us tea and offered to share their Lincolnshire sausages. We declined the offer, but donated half a dozen pullet eggs from the bantams, who seem to have sprung into laying action while we’ve been away.

Frying sausages
LIncolnshire sausages
Adjusting the lathe

On the way home we dropped in to feed the ducks at Rufford Abbey, which was the fun part of the day, and pottered home as the light faded. That was where we got our big surprise.

Julia opened her emails and was rendered speechless.

It’s quite strange seeing Julia speechless. she impersonates a goldfish and emits tiny mewing sounds.

I waited patiently, and after she recovered the power of speech she read the email to me.

When I recovered the power of speech she told me off for using bad language.

It seems that one of the teachers who has been visiting the farm has arranged to rent land on the farm to start a group using horticulture and animals for therapy. Sounds vaguely familiar. Also seems like it must have been organised during the time we were being thrown out.

What really stopped us speaking though, were the words “As I understand it, the timing was right for change for all of us”. The timing, as you may recall from previous posts, was not right for us, but was forced on us. However, it seems to be a growing belief within the farmer that he did us a favour as we were working hard and not making a living from the project. That, of course, makes him feel better at throwing the group out. It also highlights the difference in our approaches, as we don’t need a lot of money if we’re doing something worthwhile.

Anyway, now I have recovered the power of speech I’m not going to waste it.

The lake at Rufford was still partly frozen, providing hard standing for a variety of birds. We had bird food with us and, as you can see from the video it inspired some enthusiastic feeding.  The light was fading, so we restricted ourselves to the lakeside. I did try a couple of photos of squirrels under the trees but the light was so bad that camera shake rendered them useless.

I’m currently trying to improve my bird identification skills so I had a good look at the gulls and was pleased to find two that were different from the mass of Black Headed Gulls. They were both immature birds so they have lots of brown feathers and their beaks and feet are different colours from the mature adults. I took plenty of photographs and checked them against pictures on a gull ID website. Yes, there are such things.

Immature Herring Gul
Black Headed gul
immature Common gull
greylag Goose

One of the gulls seems to be an immature Common Gull. As you may gather from the name, it isn’t a rare gull. The other is an immature Herring Gull. They are even commoner than Common Gulls. It would have been nice to have spotted a rare gull but at least I managed to see them amongst all the others.

 

 

Another day, another party…

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It’s not every day get to see a Christmas tree cake with a chocolate spanner but it was the Christmas Party For Men in Sheds on Friday and Julia had a special cake made for them.

Unfortunately, nobody had told them that the party was being doubled up with lunch for a tree-planting session and they turned up to find themselves tasked with setting up tables for twenty five. Frankly, I was surprised by the language.

I was also surprised by the table cloths, which explains why we couldn’t find them for the curry on Thursday.

Julia and I had been invited to the party as guests (me because I’m old and crochety and fit the Men in Sheds demographic, Julia because she’s the pin-up girl for the over-85’s).

However, at the curry lunch I’d been asked to do the cooking. Either there was a lack of planning or a cunning scheme to get the cooking done on the cheap. It could be either, because it’s not the first time I’ve fallen for it.

The “cooking” wasn’t onerous, though it did have to be trekked across the yard instead of served up in the centre. I just had to warm the pies and peas. Then warm the fruit pies. Then walk them across the yard.  Then raid the cafe stock to produce beans on toast for a vegetarian, because nobody had thought we might have a vegetarian come for lunch.

Steak and Ale pie from Maloney the prize-winning butcher
Fruit pies from th Co-op
Mushy peas

Lack of planning again…

Anyway, despite unpromising beginnings it turned out to be quite a good meal. The food was good and the vegetarian was a jolly young woman who was quite happy chatting to a bunch of elderly men.

Fortunately I like pie and peas and I love sitting round a table  complaining about young people and modern life, though the joke of the day (asking me if it was a busy time of year – ho, ho, ho) did start to wear a bit thin. Yes, I carry a bit of extra weight, and yes I have a whiteish beard but aconstant barrage of Santa jokes would challenge even the good humour of the fat man himself.

Serving up
Sitting down toChristmas lunch

 

 

Open Farm Sunday (2)

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It’s moving into evening now and things (including me ) are slowing down.

Even now I can’t believe how smoothly the day went, though this is probably just setting me up for a horrible surprise next year.

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One child bumped his head during the course of  a trailer ride.

We lost a number of our salt dough flowers. You could consider it theft or you could consider it a compliment.

Somebody asked for their money back because they didn’t like the pizza (and it wasn’t me cooking this time!)

There were several complaints at queues for food.

As far as I know, that’s the lot.

I feel it’s a little ungrateful to complain about queuing for food.

The kitchen team gave their time for nothing and several of them also gave a couple of days to preparing food. Considering our limited facilities I think they did a brilliant job, and so did many of the people who provided feedback. People also liked the education/activity area and despite my record of upsetting parents and teachers I survived the day unblemished.

We have a list of things needing improvement, even if none of the visitors spotted them – number one being more paint on the bread-shaped shed, which looks a bit anaemic. However, when you consider that Men in Sheds did the bulk of the work in one afternoon, and still found time to make the finger posts and various other things, it worked quite well.

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We used over 300 salt dough shapes and 120 spoons for scarecrows, so guess what I’m making on Wednesday?

Tomorrow? Day off. 😉

NEWS FLASH: all three eggs we put in the incubator have now hatched. All chicks now doing well despite my misgivings about one of them.

 

 

 

Frantic Friday

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It’s been a bit of a rush today – shopping on the way to work as we haven’t been planning too well lately. The bakery section in the new Lidl at Bingham is good, so we had croissants for breakfast and sandwich baguettes for lunch. Probably a little bread-centred as a day goes, but as I said – we didn’t plan it too well.

Lidl was like a zombie convention with people of all ages doing their best to keep me away from the things I wanted to buy. It amazes me how many young people exist in a dream. I know we all slow down as we get older, I certainly am, and I’m not quite as alert as I was, but there’s no excuse for getting in my way when I’m in a hurry.

They even had a film crew in one aisle blocking my way to the jam. Well, a croissant needs jam, even if it is full of sugar. Then at the checkout (where they normally fling your shopping at you in an attempt to get rid of you quickly) another of the living dead was on the till.

Then it was the Garden Centre as Julia has plans. They include 30 seed trays and I am afraid to ask.

Men in Sheds put a donated garden shed up for us and re-roofed it. They are also making the Breadfest Project, which I may have mentioned before. I just had to add “Breadfest” to the dictionary as the spell-checker was trying to substitute “breastfed”, which would be a completely different project, and probably not one I’d be allowed to organise.

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The Community Payback team have rebuilt one of the Keyhole Gardens, which was dismantled a while ago by a keen but misdirected volunteer. They have also emptied the compost bins and rescued a litter of mice, which they put back after uncovering them. I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering why, but I suppose all compassion should be given credit. Even compassion to vermin.

I’ve emailed forty more schools to drum up some business, read a number of fascinating emails that offer me a chance to get to know exotic women better, or help them move millions of pounds by sending my bank account details and finally had to walk half way through the village to find the ASDA delivery man who, amongst other things, brought chocolate doughnuts, diet coke and garish iced buns (though that’s not what it calls them on the bag. I fear our healthy eating message is being diluted by the cafe. Not that a man of my size can take the moral high ground on the question of diet. I’d run out of breath trying to get up there, for one thing

I’m rushing to get this finished because I have to set up for a group tomorrow and get Julia home before setting off to see my uncle, who is down visiting from Lancashire. If he can travel 180 miles to see my Dad at the age of 86 I should be able to travel a mere 60 to have tea with them. It would be nice if they didn’t want tea at 5pm (which would give me more time to do my jobs), but that’s what happens as you get older – mealtimes become less flexible and bedtime moves forward.

Not that I’m one to talk – I may not organise my life around going to bed for 7.30, but I am often asleep in front of the TV by that time. The real difference between me and my dad is merely 30 years. We’re deaf in the same ear, have gold caps on the same teeth and, according to my wife and my late mother, are irritatingly similar in many ways.

At eighteen, this would have been a distressing thought, but at 58 I’m not that bothered. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to irritate Julia before going to practice being an amiable old buffer and listening to stories I’ve heard before.

The Year Ahead

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I had my annual check-up today, but that couldn’t dampen my good mood at missing the forecast “arctic blast” and driving to the appointment in lovely sunshine. It’s a  once a year thing, the GP practice seems to like doing it, and it amuses me to see them try so hard to avoid using the word “fat”. For despite modern words and modern concepts of patient dignity the truthful, accurate and short description of me is “fat”.

I have turned down the offer of swimming as therapy because I’ve seen what happens when people like me go swimming.

I have however, accepted the offer of being weighed regularly and being given vouchers to join a slimmers’ organisation – I forget which one but can feel my body bunching up ready for flight at the mere mention of the idea. Sometimes you just have to recognise the inevitable. If I wish to live and irritate my wife until I am in my eighties I am going to have to change my ways.

In many ways this belongs on the other blog (www.sherwooddays.com) but I’m telling you here because it leads on to other things.

Due to the unexpected excellence of the weather, and the desire for a nice cooked breakfast after a discussion of my weight, we went out for brunch. I think using a two meal strategy and eating beans, tomatoes and mushrooms is a sufficiently healthy start to my new weight-loss programme.

The best bit was the planning session. We have a number of half-formed plans but nothing definite on paper yet. Released from the tyranny of meetings and the need to involve idiots we now have several pages of notes relating to schools, education, the Open Farm Sunday school days, a poetry competition, salt dough work, a grant application, getting men in sheds to build us a display, Flintham Ploughing Match education tent and (as they say) much, much more.

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The advantage of our system (Julia talks, I write) is that it cuts down on discussion and saves time. If anything goes wrong it also means the blame sessions are simpler as it’s all her fault.

The disadvantage, of course, is that she’s now given me a list of jobs to do. A long list.