Pioneering Spirit... To Boldly Go! (Etc!)

Aha! Good to see that my friends in another forum have caught the Blog Bug and that one of them has consolidated we three pioneers into one posting thus reminding me of the web address of the third, much more prolific Blogger, Scatts.

This young , (well, younger and better looking than me!) Englishman has settled in Warsaw, married a stunning Polish girl and between them, produced the fair " Zosia".. Now, ALL children are beautiful, but Zosia! She takes any of our original standards of beauty and leaves us all gasping in her wake. The Spanish have a word which fits Zosia to a"T".... "Preciosa"

I did warn Scatts, that on his recent holiday in Spain he would have a job to extract Zosia in one piece from her devoted admirers, (hotel staff, people in the street, just about everybody, really!) but judging from his latest photos, he has managed quite well!

Being a very new blogger around these parts, I'm a bit wary of publishing the blog sites of my 2 forum friends without their specific permission. So I'll hold fire with linking their blogs in here until I get that permission .

Nature Notes.....

On my regular golf game this morning, a rare sight of two young roebuck, galloping across the fairway from left to right. They burst out of the woods on our left and must have been so intent on the game of "Chasy" or "Tig" that they were almost upon us, but very late in their run, they suddenly jinked away to their left, and within seconds they were gone! They looked like a pair of very naughty boys out for what ever mischief they could find!

The two mature swans who have taken up an almost permanent residence on the nowadays quite large pond, are great favourites with the golfers and are fed by most of us as we pass by. The male came out to meet us this morning and as my tee shot had landed within 20 foot of his domain, he looked as if he was going to dispute possession! I dug into my bag and tossed a crust of bread to one side, diverting his attention long enough for me to complete my second shot to the green. I was satisfied with my shot and the swan was happy with his bread, so honours even, we passed on our separate ways.

Thanks to a lot of effort by the Greens Staff in draining the recent floods, our course is drying out quite well, and the extra "run" which the hardening ground gives to the ball is a very welcome bonus to we "all year round" golfers. The current spell of comparatively mild, dry weather helps a lot, but there are still some low lying parts of the course which are holding on to the surface water and about to claim the attention of the drainage crews.

The Bike Shed. Or.....

Authorised Erections on the Lawn (Department of.)


On my return home I saw that my bike shed had arrived.....

Secure storage space is at a premium here. I'm the non-too proud possessor of the Smallest Garage in the Western World ,which, when my current buggy, (a Citroen C5 ) is in residence, allows for not a lot of room to put anything else beside it. As I'm currently in an "Exercise Mode" as part of my weight loss programme, regular bike rides have become part of my daily routine. Hence the need to be able to store a bicycle securely and not have to move several pieces of gardening equipment each and every time the bike is needed. Enter the new shed, delivered as a self assembly kit, complete with instructions and diagrams on how to assemble it.

I made a start by unpacking and checking over this quite large plastic wrapped parcel and reading the quite well written instructions. They called for 4 slightly raised and level wooden battens to support the shed's floor section clear of the ground. Not having any suitably sized timber about my person. I turned to my modest collection of house bricks which have been stored in the garden,just waiting patiently for me to "Get a round to them". Selecting 16, I laid them out in 4 rows of 4 and then set to with a will to level them off, Two hours and at least a gallon of hot coffee later the bricks were level ( or as near to level as a blind man on a galloping horse would be able to judge!)and my back was killing me! In the local vernacular, I gave my self a "Sharp Lowse" (To knock off work early) and will continue tomorrow....


Work on the shed progressed well until the time came to attach the side walls. One of them was found to be cracked right through the side frame, where the 1" x 1" softwood batten, was cracked just where a huge knot takes up all of the width and depth of the batten, rendering it useless. The break is just where the lower hinge of the door is designed to go, so something tells me to be very aware of further problems in the quality control department .

Way back in the time of Noah when "Aah wuz nobbut a lad" my foreman in the Carpentry shop impressed up on me the need to take a good while to select timber for any job and to discard anything with knots in it at once, especially if the timber was to be load bearing. These days, that advice would seem to have been long forgotten.

A telephone call got an immediate offer of a replacement, so the shed will have to remain un -erected for now.