Work? I Can Sit And Watch It For Hours

Posted By on 5th March 2018

After the atrocious weather of last week it’s easy to forget that Spring is just around the corner, but it is, so I thought I’d take a look back in my diary to see what I was doing last year at this time to get ready for my favourite season.

I was surprised to read that I was busily digging up and splitting the plants in a particularly overcrowded flower bed, which I remember being very hard work. I say ‘surprised’ because this year I haven’t so much as picked up a trowel in anger.

I think the reasons for this are many and varied. I’m 12 months older and haven’t been feeling great, the shed doors heal up intermittently with the weather so I can’t always access my tools and the soil is cold, wet and water-logged.

But even if these things were ‘cured’ I have nowhere to put any weeds because the ‘green’ bin collection has been scaled back by the council, in fact I’m still trying to get rid of last Autumn’s hedge trimmings!

However, some people have been working in these cold conditions.

Take BT for example, or whatever they’re called these days. They spent the whole of half-term week digging a trench outside the school so we can have Superfast Broadband. I say ‘a whole week’ but most days they knocked off at lunchtime or just after.

The strangest thing was that every few hours a man, dressed in black, would arrive and take photos, and I don’t mean just a quick ‘snap’ either. He photographed the trench from every possible angle and then, just when you thought he’d finished, he photographed it some more.

Goodness knows what they did before digital cameras, I can’t really see ‘the man in black’ queuing at ‘Boots’ waiting for his film to be developed!

Anyway, I thought I’d take one of my own. This is after the digging when the wires were being connected in the newly installed green box. The fetching umbrella is to keep the rain off the wiring. Very hi-tech!

Then on February 23rd, just a week before the deadline for cutting hedges, the man with the big machine arrived, we’ve been waiting for him since October!

Further north in Aberdeenshire (before the big snow arrived) work was also underway in readiness for Spring.

Here you can see Graham giving his beloved tractor some TLC

and charging the battery on his quad bike ‘Moose’.

Whilst Janice takes the photos, their beautiful ‘boys’ Arran and Skye look on with interest, eager to join in.

Finally this bit is specially for Peter, in fact when I stumbled upon it I was surprised to discover that he hadn’t written it himself. In fact we have Leonardo da Vinci to thank for this pearl of wisdom.

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”

Need I say more?

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