Week 48 New garage door

Week 48

New garage door arriving...

 

With remote control!!!

Oh, the irony...or is it simply Murphy's Law?

The week before, we had "stored" the old insulation in the garage - just a temporary fix...

...but then the new door came a few weeks earlier than expected - so we needed to make room for the cars so they don't ice up overnight. It is definitely not a pleasant task to scrape the car before you can go anywhere. We've already had it a couple of times this year - and the police are prepared to give out fines if visibility is impaired from any of the windows - so it has to be done properly.

So, we had to find another spot for the insulation! We had old matresses stored on the rack in the garage - and a few other things. My invaluable helper Tjeerd made some room and we moved most of the insulation up out of the way. In the meantime, our attic storage is just about full - I've been building a floor in it for about 10 years now - slowly expanding as we need more room...(through the door behind Tjeerd)

Last week

This week

Registration for Tractors...

(aka "how to lose Days of One's Life)

I quite literally spent more than a day trying to register my puny little tractor...

finding the right information was difficult enough - anything on the tractor is in Japanese! (it took me years to realise that I had the 4-wheel drive version, for example). We're still in some doubt as to the need to register the ride-on mower...

I'm still not sure about the Government motives for "registering anything that can go on the Public Road system" - a few cynics around here think that it is purely a money-making thing (like cars). But there was talk a few years ago about young (farm worker) boys being allowed to ride the (sometimes huge) tractors on the roads. We followed one the other day at 60mph... and even in the years that I have been here all the farm machinery has grown enormously - but the local roads haven't.

ALL the tractors (or any other machinery that can go faster than 6 km/h) has to be registered - if it is done before 1 january 2022 then the fee is €18,00 (for us) - if it is done later, the price goes up to €150,00 AND the vehicle also has to have a roadworthy certificate! 

 I had to pull it apart in order to get a "legible" photo of the chassis number...well. I could read it so they should be able to...

On a lighter note....

our new local supermarket had the closest thing I have ever found to chocolate ripple biscuits... even if they are about 4 times the size!

I still haven't found canned spaghetti yet...😖

Walking in the dark...

I nearly got cleaned up last week by a cyclist without a headlight - we brushed shoulders as he went past - he hadn't seen me either, I presume. He would have been hurt far worse than me if he had fallen off -in fact,  it could have been far worse all round....

So, Janny bought me a shoulder strap with a headlight and a red tail light...it is very effective - I could probably dazzle any cyclist who dared to get in my way again...

So, a relatively quiet week....I'm still reeling from the gas prices - I even rang our supplier to check that I was doing the right thing in passing the €1,90 /m3 price on to our residents - i.e. "Is it really €1,90?" I asked. Yep, afraid so...

Lots of fires for us, at least. I have moved my computer out of the "sunroom" into the living room - so we are really only heating one room - the rest is simple being maintained at about 16C .

And I have to think about buying more firewood for next year - and making the change to heap pumps or.... anything, really... I remember Janny's Dad telling us that their living room was about 12m2  - when they they used to live here.