Notable 2020 milestones
Saturday 1 August: a day of two noteworthy occurrences:
1) Bertie was taxed and hit the road for the first time since we arrived home in mid-March;
2) Mick & I travelled somewhere together in a motor vehicle for the first time in the same timeframe.
Alas, there’s no travel report, photos or “Where’s Bertie?” statement, as the trip in question comprised visiting Screwfix, Lidl, B&Q and a petrol station, and being back home an hour and a half later.
Early Birthday Presents
In April we splashed out on a couple of ‘Bertie-the-motorhome on tour’ parkrun t-shirts, which I justified as an early birthday present for me and a late one for Mick. I decided to overlook that this week when I splashed out again, recycling the ‘it’s a birthday present’ excuse.
In 1999 I bought my first drill, having always until that point borrowed my father’s tools. It was the cheapest model sold by Homebase and cost me £19. It’s had a lot of use over the years (a few whole-house renovations in amongst countless other tasks) and is still going (in fact, the holes in the piece of wood shown in the photo on my last post were made with that very tool). That first purchase set the tone for subsequent tool acquisitions: cordless drill, SDS drills, sanders, router, circular saw, chop saw, jig saw: not one of them cost more than £35 and some significantly less (the cheapest was the orbital sander at £5). The only branded item in my entire collection was a Black & Decker plane.
However, both of the batteries for my cordless drill were increasingly failing to hold charge, precipitating the need for a replacement, and this time I decided to buy something of superior quality and specification: something that could actually cope with drilling into masonry. Essentially, I was going to spent a lot of money (comparatively) purely as a matter of frivolous convenience; that is to say, I’ve never yet had a situation where I couldn’t use a corded drill, albeit sometimes with a significant faff factor.
This is what I bought myself:
It feels so much nicer in the hand than any of my other tools!
I’m sure that it won’t pay for itself over time and is not objectively worth the money, but the beauty of birthday gifts (even to oneself!) is that they don't have to be sensible.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary…
A fruit and veg update:
We ate our first couple of courgettes last week and have two more that will be ready for picking in the next couple of days:
There are always some runner beans that hide cunningly away until they’ve grown overlarge and tough. It's obvious which of these were this week’s culprits. Until yesterday we’d conveniently been getting 5-8 beans per day, which is perfect for the two of us (we’ve been eating beans every night, whether they fit well with the meal we’re having or not) but yesterday’s crop (not photographed) took us into the realm of ‘slightly overrun’. Perhaps there will be a few lean days now, giving us the chance to eat through the backlog?
The apple tree isn’t doing too badly, although I’d be grateful if the unseasonable winds could stop blowing them off the boughs. The pear tree is positively laden.
Most excitingly of all, considering I didn’t expect to achieve any fruit at all due to starting the plants waaaaaaaay later than any gardener would ever advise, we have tomatoes growing:
Baby tomatoes! I've counted 10 in total tonight. I have to thank JJ for giving me the notion of achieving tomato plants simply by shoving a couple of slices of tomato into some compost.
Veering away from the edible, the daisies (two varieties) are putting on a nice display too:
Saturday 1 August: a day of two noteworthy occurrences:
1) Bertie was taxed and hit the road for the first time since we arrived home in mid-March;
2) Mick & I travelled somewhere together in a motor vehicle for the first time in the same timeframe.
Alas, there’s no travel report, photos or “Where’s Bertie?” statement, as the trip in question comprised visiting Screwfix, Lidl, B&Q and a petrol station, and being back home an hour and a half later.
Early Birthday Presents
In April we splashed out on a couple of ‘Bertie-the-motorhome on tour’ parkrun t-shirts, which I justified as an early birthday present for me and a late one for Mick. I decided to overlook that this week when I splashed out again, recycling the ‘it’s a birthday present’ excuse.
In 1999 I bought my first drill, having always until that point borrowed my father’s tools. It was the cheapest model sold by Homebase and cost me £19. It’s had a lot of use over the years (a few whole-house renovations in amongst countless other tasks) and is still going (in fact, the holes in the piece of wood shown in the photo on my last post were made with that very tool). That first purchase set the tone for subsequent tool acquisitions: cordless drill, SDS drills, sanders, router, circular saw, chop saw, jig saw: not one of them cost more than £35 and some significantly less (the cheapest was the orbital sander at £5). The only branded item in my entire collection was a Black & Decker plane.
However, both of the batteries for my cordless drill were increasingly failing to hold charge, precipitating the need for a replacement, and this time I decided to buy something of superior quality and specification: something that could actually cope with drilling into masonry. Essentially, I was going to spent a lot of money (comparatively) purely as a matter of frivolous convenience; that is to say, I’ve never yet had a situation where I couldn’t use a corded drill, albeit sometimes with a significant faff factor.
This is what I bought myself:
I’m sure that it won’t pay for itself over time and is not objectively worth the money, but the beauty of birthday gifts (even to oneself!) is that they don't have to be sensible.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary…
A fruit and veg update:
We ate our first couple of courgettes last week and have two more that will be ready for picking in the next couple of days:
The apple tree isn’t doing too badly, although I’d be grateful if the unseasonable winds could stop blowing them off the boughs. The pear tree is positively laden.
Veering away from the edible, the daisies (two varieties) are putting on a nice display too:
Please don’t focus on the rose in need of dead-heading!
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