With all the posts on here, it’s almost as if you guys don’t have anything better to do than sit at home and post on SF.
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I’ve been out in the garden and managed to break my strimmer 
hey ho will have to use the hand shears and cripple my wrists, but at least I have a garden and the sun is out
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I’ve been very busy working on projects have at least 3 weeks of work. Been doing some gardening, tomorrow painting one of the bathrooms, & maybe start fitting the double glazed windows on the back of the house. Going out for walks around the village 3 times a day & seeing more cats than people. Mrs Wozza is doing wonders in the kitchen becoming a master chef. I pop in from time to time during the day to see what going on in the land of SF. As always the British Gov is getting a bashing & all the usual experts are out & about, I can’t remember who is worried about getting rabies but that one made me laugh. Black death next on the list I suppose. I’ll be sacrificing a goat to use the blood to paint a cross on my door. Thank God this forum exists as it’s gr8 for those confined to their houses, & from what I’ve seen over the last few days majority good-humoured.
Stay safe & good health to all.
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Strimmers are the hari kiri or kamikaze weapons of garden warfare, they operate by deliberately self-destructing and by doing as much random damage as they are capable in the process.
I’ve had about five of the buggers, all a waste of money and vicious with it.
So true Peter, think I’ve had about 5 over the years, this one decided to destroy the spool cover, totally smashing it to pieces.
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T’ was I in response to our vet posting on his Facebook page that his professional body has stopped him from vaccinating animals, no explanation as to why.
I’m glad it made you chuckle.
If you own a cheap Chinese garden tool you are in luck, because they are all put together from readily available, inexpensive parts. Order spares direct from Hong Kong via eBay. They might arrive (virus free) before lock down is over!
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The sight of men in hi-viz suits, steel toe boots, hard hats, visors and ear protectors, is an everyday part of the scene.
But in Wales, I once saw an old guy in a tweed jacket and cap, working his way quietly and quickly along a field bank with a hand scythe. He had already done 50 yards in the time it would take a strimmer operator to get kitted up!
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When we lived in UK we lived down a very narrow single track lane with a steep bank on one side.
The Council, to save money, stopped two old guys from cutting back the silt that accumulated at the side of the lane.
One day we had our septic tank emptied and I then heard a huge knocking on my window. It was the driver of the septic tank wagon telling me that his wheels had gone over the edge, which was hidden by brambles which hid the side of the lane and he had had to jump out . He had been forced too far to the edge by the growth which had grown on the silt which had not been removed. Whilst he was on the 'phone to his depot we heard the tanker go over and roll down into the field at the bottom.
It cost the Council tens of thousands to get the tanker out of the bottom field and reinstate the bank with stones in gabion baskets.
People came from miles around to watch them trying to get the tanker out. I should have set up a tea and coffee stall!
Moral, be careful where you try to save money.
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The difference being that the money would have come the Council’s insurer as opposed to normal budgeting so they probably saved the Council Tax payer a fair slice…
And who pays the subs for the Council’s ins policy? And how will the ins co regard the following year’s premium?
When I was in business, I regarded my ins policy as the diamond on top of the pyramid. The pyramid below it was the income from the business, the cash in the bank, the short term facilities offered by the bank or, a couple of times, kind and canny berth-holders.
It was, as one of my berth-holders told me after his £800 dinghy was stolen, “There for sums I cannot afford myself”
All the Council did was displace the costs to a different ledger in the accounts.
… in it’s frenzied suicide mission to slice off your toes 
Surely not if the council had been negligent and there was a court case too from the owners of the tanker.
Hummm so, if you are deemed negligent by ramming the car in front up the tail end, you can’t claim on your insurance?
Madness. That’s what insurance is for 
It’s a little electric one so no damage to me, but pretty peed off as it comes in handy
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My neighbour René’s protective strimmer apparel is a rather rakish straw trilby (and his normal glasses!).
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I think the. EU including the Uk will realise that we can’t keep buying chinese crap made of plastic, the papers are saying that too many businesses have been relying on cheap imports, which is polluting the planet and need replacing.
The old tools and white goods made 30-40 years ago still work but 10 years old they break and thrown away to be dumped in Africa or Asia.
You make a very interesting point. But we are trapped in a vicious circle. More and more people in the West are living on subsistence wages, so that they have no choice but to buy cheap imported goods. But the profits are going to foreign countries and rich entrepreneurs. With manufacture going abroad, there are less decently paid jobs at home. So we are hovering on the event horizon of an economic black hole. Global capitalism only works for the rich.
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Here in Luxembourg the local large Supermarket (cactus) still has the garden department open where you can buy strimmers, some I think made in Europe (it did a few days ago) What about in France at the big ones?
We feel so happy and lucky we live in a house with a garden. We feel sorry for those living in an apartment without even a balcony.
Just so. It is #2 reason I put my flat in Valencia, a wonderful city, on the mkt just in time for the estate agents to go into purdah. I’ve had it with city life. Marvellous as that is here, I’m after a bit of outside space now - in France.
Not only do I not have a balcony but my salon/comedor is ‘interior’ - that is it doesn’t have windows to the outside world but onto a lightwell. This is a not uncommon set-up in Spanish flats.
There are 4 floors above me …
Jimi Hendrix must have been feeling a bit low when he wrote
No sun comin’ through my windows. Feel like I’m livin’ at the bottom of a grave
No sun comin’ through my windows. Feel like I’m livin’ at the bottom of a grave
I wish you’d hurry up and execute me. So I can be on my miserable way
It’s not that bad but there is, indeed, no sun comin’ thru my windows unless I take to my bedroom.
The opportunity to sit out under the trees of a cafe … when again?
[The blossoms did actually fall onto my table. I just rearranged them a bit]
or a paella gigante en la calle?
I believe camping sites are closed. I wonder about municipal aires such as this one in La Belle France Profonde.
If I could get to Blighty I could take to my camper in the caravan field of a friend’s house.
I will just have to put up with la vida interior for a bit …
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