Back in the summer, when I was moored at Bulbourne, I tried to straighten a bent bracket by banging it with the hammer on the concrete pilings. My efforts were rewarded by the bracket leaping into the cut, and I nearly followed it. No matter out came the fishing magnet again, but try as I might, no luck in retrieving the bracket BUT I did get a rather nice, old iron spike.
Gave it a good wash and put it on the stove top not knowing what else to do with it.
Then comes the October rainy season and the Little Old Man gets a bit wet and needs to dry his hat.
Boating requires ingenuity to deal with its vagaries. This year's trip on NB Wolf was no exception with plenty to keep the little old man watcher entertained.
This just has to be the ultimate in space saving and such a good idea! Actually, this post is just an excuse for me to link you into a website specialising in estate agent promotional photographs. Its well worth the mouse click.
One wonders just what sort of creature this contraption was meant to assist aboard.
Well if its sagging clearly you need a prop. But is this really a good idea I asks?
An old shipping container makes a handy and secure shed. It is also a good idea to raise them up off the ground so that the bottoms don't rust. Usually a couple of sleepers or concrete blocks are quite adequate for this job. Of course if you just happen to have a length of tree trunk and a few wobbly bricks then I suppose this will do the job too. Only problem is that if the tree trunk is rather long then the door of the shed might just be a bit high for ease of entry. Easy solution, just build a staircase up to the door.
We are out and about on the canals at the moment and experiencing a rich seam of Little Old Man improvisation. The Little Old Man has often considerd building some sort of cratch cover for Cribbit and this certainly looks like it could be a good model. Trouble is that Cribbit's cratch is a bit small and Reliant Robins are now hard to come by.
This is turning out to be yet another 'year of the slug' and little old men and women across the land are devising ways to keep their precious plants free from them. This week's issue shows how they can be defeated by giving them an array of telescopes so that they spend their time star gazing instead of plant grazing.
Do you fancy having a nice summer house at the bottom of your garden but that there is a large tree just where you want to put it? No problem, leave the tree where it is and build your summer house round it.
When Jim stayed with us last year we had a get together with some of his other UK friends at Catslide. Inevitably, a [male] member of the party needed to use the toilet and on his way there Jim exclaimed: 'Watch out it is a SLICER' now I hadn't heard this expression before but I knew well what it meant as the propensity of the toilet seat to fall down at the wrong moment had been annoying the Little Old Man for some time.
What makes this especially annoying is that you think the seat is well up and then with infinite, but rapidly accelerating, slowness the seat lid comes crashing down. The Little Old Man had tried several little tricks to cure it, by removing the spacers in the anchor points and by cutting back the cover for the pipework at the back so the cistern lid would sit back a bit further. All to no avail. The real cause was the spring in the flush mechanism which slowly pushed the seat beyond its equilibrium point. He spent half a day yesterday fabricating a new flushing mechanism but even though this was better it still didn't solve the problem. Then the light dawned. Just remove the little plastic buffers between the two lids and the seat can stand more upright.
Soon after this little modification was made, the Little Old Man got caught out by the return of the slicer's slicing pathology. To his surprise, the little buffers were back in place. This was a little puzzling but he decided that perhaps he was getting as forgetful as others were asserting.
Rosemary read this post a few days ago and said: 'Ohh! I wondered why they had come out so I put them back'
I had rather a nice email from my sister the other day:
Having installed our super dooper squirrel wood burning stove just lately it had been drawn to my attention that the coal bucket we are using is not up to scratch (see photo) so I have been looking in shops to find an elegant replacement but with no success... Telling Jim this today his reply was'
Well I could always cover it with black masking tape if you like...
dear dear husband!!
We have seen plenty of uses for this wonderful tape in these pages over the years and when Alex set off to leave this morning, we discovered that Little Old WoMan that she is, she is making full use of the very same stuff.
Now Little Old Men like to be organised AND they don't like throwing things away, especially when they are useful.
So when you buy a new car and it has nice clean carpets in the back and you like carrying bags of cement and other good stuff which might just make a mess of that carpet.
............
That is when you need a protective boot cover. It is helpful if your previous car had a similar sort of thing and just because it is too big for the new one, it doesn't mean it can't be suborned into service.
Comes the moment when the Little Old Man wants that handy box featured in Issue 60 and it is nowhere to be found. Well that is NOT quite right it was somewhere to be found. In the re-cycling bin to be precise. The Little Old Man is no stranger to skip diving so it was easily retrieved. Though not so pristine as before.
A long time ago, probably when the Little Old Man was still at school, he came across a poem that has haunted him ever since and he has never been able to find again. It sounds like a Buddhist sort of thing but the gist of it is:
I was walking in high places,
when I saw far below me a man castrating a yak.
I descended to remonstrate with him,
then I continued to walk in high places,
but not so high as before.
Recently, the little old man had a need for a small box AND he had just bought a small spotlight that came in a box of exactly the right size BUT that it was covered with product information on the outside. Solution, take it carefully apart and re-assemble inside out. Simple.