The lawnmower hasn’t exactly seen a lot of action this year. Nor last year, come to think of it. This week however, the grass finally achieved a length needing cutting for the first time since May. Turns out that it has been disturbed so little that when getting it out of the shed, we discovered this nest in the roof space.
I’m assuming the shed has been home to a family of house martins/swallows over Summer.
Yes, more tomatoes 😀 And a cucumber for a bit of variation.
But yet again I missed the afternoon reading. The morning one is perhaps a bit higher than I’d expect given recent results, too.
coming from the chicken runs earlier.
The egg on the right is extra large. The one on the left is… well… I don’t know… Emu?
On Thursday I submitted the last of my blood pressure readings for the week to the GP. On Friday I received a text message from the GP saying that he was pleased to see the numbers are getting closer to where he’d like to see them. Then the question “How are you feeling in yourself?” followed by a link to a form to fill in for the answer.
I really don’t know what to say. “I’ve never felt so shit in my life” doesn’t seem to be a particularly helpful response, but if I actually start to list everything I’m struggling with at the moment it’s quite depressing. It feels as though I have a choice between coming off the drugs, having my life return to what passes for normal and accepting the increased risk of something quite unpleasant happening “soon” (which in turn would probably make my life quite grim), or keep taking the meds and having a marginally less grim life but still be unable to do almost anything I enjoy.
I’ve been pressing apples this week. There are far fewer than last year, so I’m actually doing less than half the work that I was twelve months ago, but taking the same amount of time. I was lifting bottles of juice out of the pasteuriser at one point and was quite insistently told to stop because I looked so awful.
This is not me, nor the way I want my life to be. I don’t really know how to “stop”. “Doing stuff” is how I am.
At least, for the older forty litre model. In spite of other plans, today mostly turned into a day of fixing things.
The most complex one was replacement of the failed neoprene bladder in said Speidel forty litre hydropress which became rather urgent when I discovered that it had already been hired out for tomorrow.
Fortunately we’d already been shipped the replacement bladder. Speidel provide instructions for doing this, but only for the rather lovely stainless steel presses they sell now, not the ones they sold fifteen years ago which are of a slightly different design. The new instructions do at least suggest a way forward, but require the disassembly of the water inlet/outlet manifold, all the joints of which are sealed with something sufficiently strong that I began to worry about damaging the parts whilst trying to separate them. A different approach was clearly required.
I removed the nut at the top of the bladder and fiddled the metal clamp off after wiggling the bladder around to release it where it had sealed together. That allowed me to push the bladder off the top completely and remove the internal nylon baffle, a seal (which I probably should have replaced really) a spacer.
Underneath I backed off the nut that holds the inlet manifold in place against the underside of the base — the only one that isn’t actually sealed.
That gave me sufficient play in the central bladder support that I could wiggle the bottom end out and release it completely.
Reassembly with the new bladder is then the reverse of disassembly, as they say in all good Haynes manuals. Positioning of the bottom opening of the bladder is important. There’s a raised central section of the press base that the bladder needs to fit around rather than overlap.
Once everything is back together it just needs testing to check for leaks.
A quick peak inside the old one demonstrates why you don’t want water from in there mixing with your lovely apple juice.
Whilst fitting the new bladder I discovered a manufacturing date on the side so I went looking for one on the old one. Looks like it says February 2010 to me. I guess that means it doesn’t really owe us anything.
I was distracted. It happens. But then so does this.
And then I forgot to take them for the rest of the day.
Forgot the early afternoon reading though — just morning and evening.
Down at the press room last week we found this little chap hanging onto the door post. Seems a very odd place to hang out as it’s quite exposed, but he/she seemed to be doing a decent job of holding on despite the gusty breeze.
I think it’s a grey long-eared bat, though I’m no chiropterologist. If so, it appears to be quite rare. Otherwise I guess it could be a brown long-eared bat, but it doesn’t really look brown to me.
It had disappeared by the next day so hopefully it found a more suitable place to call home rather than becoming a cat toy.
