Druidic exploits of a various nature!!

[v8druid]

right then ....... try and catch you's all up on my recent 'gainful employment' number .....

Mavis and Alex kept Wacker an' me pretty damned busy all the first week ..... and the second one.....too !!






we shifted some stuff ...... 'twas a hell of a hole and was filling quietly !!

had 3 hours on Mavis, Wed.s afternoon, 2nd week, leveling the tip area, while Alex attended to other things ...... jeez he makes it look so easy, standing watching him ..... but we'd gotten into rock by then and hell that took some flattening out and tracking down.... this was stuffed full, by lunchtime .... 'fore i got let loose on it







having gotten rained on that morning, the Somme lived up to its name that day ... tough going for Wacker, crammed full of rock !!



and we were finding some pretty decent specimens

rocks.jpg


















Mavis had fun with some of 'em



And I thought I had mole hill problems beside the drive at home










my job Monday morning, week 3, was flatten and track this lot in ...... hopefully it was gonna be an easier proposition that all the bloody rock I'd done that week


the soil there was like goose shit when wet ... wacker had a mind of his own, on it, if it was wet .... just had to keep up with him .... or else!!


Some clay, some sandy clay and some pure sand ... plus a lorrarock when it's dry it was lovely stuff to work with and it'd been knocked about a fair bit, before it ended up in wacker and down at the tip area


It'd been a real interesting thing to be involved in and I've learnt a lot ...
it was deffo gonna look the bollox when completed ....
Alex has a real eye for it and can really visualise what he wants to achieve, fair play to him ....
some of it had not been an easy proposition either ......
oh for a tilt bucket ... or better still a 'tilty' for some of the weirder angles.


I've been amazed at just how he managed some of it, with a fixed bucket .. and a lot of skillful operating.

forgotten to mention .... this stable had to go .... and was gonna end up as bonfire fodder .... if a home couldn't be found for it .. and quick !!





Owner didn't value it and it was 'in the way' ... big time ...


So, said I'd mention it to my neighbour, who's always up for a 'freebie shed' and took him a load of pix ..... He was ... and he had it apart PDQ in a day or two .......... and gone !!


Result ...... and hopefully a few brownie points all round





Was way too nice a shed to get the bucket treatment ... and I just did not have the time ....... as I had to point out to Pam

the cables you see to the left of the pic are the main supplies for the site ...... were supposed to be running the other side (back side) of the stable ....... good job Alex was being careful here, as we hadn't found 'em where we'd expected to

[v8druid]

after watching Alex performing with Mavis the following wednesday, on a slope that is bloody hard work to walk up .......
I could not believe just where he'd take her and the results he could achieve
Bloody impressive sort of just about covers it ...... but only just


the camera really does not do this slope justice ..... standing on it is bloody hard work ... and I've been up and down this a few times in the last few weeks


Oh for a tilty!!


[I did notice the lap strap came into play on this un too !!]












































then we found the grand daddy rock in the floor !!!!



that didn't give up without a hell of a fight from Mavis




'twere a beast .... made some of mine look like pebbles

some of t'others got 'redeployed' to more useful purposes











Alex and the site's owner giving a new 'bridge' a try out

[Nobody]

Damn nice pics Druid! Whole lot of shifting land masses going on there, impressive! Especially with the equipment in use.. How did the wacker treat your back and intestines doing all that??

[v8druid]

Had to have the day off on the 24th ....... 6 monthly body MOT day in The Heath Hospital, Cardiff .....

had some real good news on the results.


I'd been sort of expecting it, as a year ago I could not have coped with the previous three weeks in Wacker ..... my spleen would've been complaining after an hour in him ..... let alone 3 weeks, so I have been looking forward to the scans today to confirm my thoughts.


It's official .... it's shrunk ...... A LOT..... gone from 650ml last August to just over 400mls ..... huge difference and big smiles all round Friday .....
needs to shrink another 50% to get down to the 'normal average', assuming mine has ever been 'normal', of course ..... this might be my norm??? .... they have no idea, as I have no real medical history, prior to Aug. 2010 .... cos I've never been really ill before .... I certainly haven't felt better, in a long time, so I am ecstatic

Was a bit 'tender' that night after having been prodded, poked and probed by a real smart radiologist for 45 minutes , followed by another 45 minutes of being pawed by an even smarter registrar and two equally hot med students


Was considering going back the next day for a second opinion

Been a slow old process, from a start point in 2012 of 3,200+ mls, to get down to where we are, especially when it plateau-ed for a year at 1600-ish mls .... didn't think it was ever going to improve ..... but .... it has .... now to hopefully maintain it where it is

Also told I's OK for trips on 'the big white bird' too
and with Pam's abilities to do the treatments honed to perfection, all we need to do is work out HTF to keep the drugs at/between +2C to +6C and "the worlds our oyster" ..... above or below those temps and they'm fooked


However ........... Friday's exuberance was a little short lived .... an hour or more's prodding, pushing, poking, palpating, etc., by the medics cost me several hours sleep and a couple of rhino-stopperson the Saturday night ... Hadn't sobered up 'til Sunday evening !!

May have shrunk, but still appeared to be too easy to piss it off!!


They managed in an hour, what Wacker hadn't, in 3 weeks !!



Anyway ...... I managed to be 'fit for duty' on the Monday .... week 4

the previous week'd been spent starting to knock things into shape a bit, having shifted the bulk of what had to be moved.


six 20t loads of black stuff duly arrived Monday morning ......





...... for sub base for the roadway and some of it got laid out





a lot of the lumps got shifted about ...





to their desired locations ....




and 'launched', in some cases .....





to their final resting places !!
bridge no 2





bit of creative positioning for a lot more ......





.and some top soil .... hey presto one rockery ..... least the makings of one once it's planted up.


A serious burning session has been had for all the crud ripped out ....





... which burned for 2 days !!

[v8druid]

bottom end'd taken shape nicely ....




new gas tanks 'landed' and installed .....





and buried!


A hell of a lot of cleaning off ready for top soil distribution'd been going on and a lot of the stockpiled heap had been placed, ready to be knocked out and sorted...








both down the filled area and everywhere else .... good job most of it got left in heaps on the Thursday .....
we got rained off that Friday, for the first time in 4 weeks, which wasn't bad going really ..
We had been real lucky with the weather

wacker was gonna be going off home Monday morning and I was getting a few new mounts to play with .....


brand new 6t swivel Thwaites to replace Wacker, who was now getting a bit big and leaving far too many ruts . Lost me cab though!!


Lil' traccy with a stone bury-er/cultivator, for the top soil fettling and a 3t Tachi 360 for the fiddlier bits .. with cab and heater !!


Concrete was organised for Tuesday, week 5, for two gert slabs, 12.3 x 6+m, for the two new cabins, a foot thick and Alex and an additional labourer were gonna be busy putting the forms together Monday, to contain the grey stuff and laying in the foul plumbing into 'em, so sounded like I was gonna be getting lots of do this and do that,s, whilst they were busy with sorting that lot.


I was gonna be on Mavis for the day on the Tuesday, placing the grey stuff, as required.


Didn't know what my clone was gonna be doing LOL!!


Oh and there was another 80t of black stuff to be run out too !!





And when Alex had finished with my services ...... had a new lil' summat sat beside my bench awaiting my attention .....

[v8druid]

I'd also been wondering whether I should be giving this serious consideration, for a 'Drema mobile toy store, come load lugger .... might just be a bit too much of a handful, given available space for maneuvering about ... quite nice though













....... and not a huge amount of beer vouchers !!
Hmmmmmmmm decisions, decisions !!


keep forgetting to say ...... there are LOTS more pix in 'the bucket' ..... click on any pic to take you to me bucket !!




bit of a story to the HPX Kinshoffer


Local and on Ebay ........ as something else !!


Alex and I both FB PM-ed each other when it appeared, virtually simultaneously ... but his was first


so..... I have it here to create a mount for it and he couldn't/didn't have anything to unload it at his place, when we went and picked it up


We knocked off early on the Thursday and went and picked it up, in Alex's new van..





....... hoping it looked better in the flesh than the pix on ebay!!


It did and home it came


So I'm still looking for an HPX for meself ...... but the mount will be suitably created to suit whatever he wants it to go on ....... and take an existng mount for my VA-r, due to Mr Kinshoffer using his std 141mm centres to mount it .... I already have 3 mounts it'll go under !


we'd both also found these .....





and are currently winding the seller down on 'em from his silly asking price ... LOL .... I can remember them being on there last year and not selling then either !! Watch this space as they say !!

[v8druid]

week 5 was .........

bye bye Wacker .....





Hello Thwai.... ........ wait a minute !!!!










Argh !!!!!! JCB !!!!!!!





Brand new it may be ....





and it did start to come off the truck ... LOL


Drove quite nice too ..... on the hard ...... 1st gear job in the soft with a loaded skip, which it struggled to tip .... 'twere full, but not stuffed, then second run the clag defeated it .... thought I was gonna have to get pulled out, but just managed to get out under me own steam ..... ..... but Jeez it was wet after a weekend's rain ..... just plowed its way into the deck !!!


Turned it off for a 'conversation' with Mavis's pilot and damn me it wouldn't start ..... fiddled with everything .... gears in neutral, switch in neutral, handbrake on/off/on bounced up and down on the seat ...... 'kin Nada ...


Alex trudged across and had a fiddle ...... nada .....
then we sussed no neutral light....fiddled with fwd/rev switch AGAIN .....
and away it went, despite already having tried that several times ARGH !!!!!!


Didn't bode well for the day, but must've been the newness of it was fine the rest of the day, aside from it's struggle to tip/swivel .......


oh and the stink of burning new/fresh paint

A Thwaites it wasn't

[v8druid]

Damn nice pics Druid! Whole lot of shifting land masses going on there, impressive! Especially with the equipment in use.. How did the wacker treat your back and intestines doing all that??

Cheers boyo ..... lots more in me Bucket ..... click on any pic for a link

Wacker was not the most comfortable of velocipedes, unless a light right foot was deployed ..... fine on the flat/smooth, but the slightest of lumps/bumps/ruts and I was hanging on for grim death

had to be very selective on course and it was better loaded ..... 'til you hit 'the Somme' area .... then it was low and slow, to stand any chance of staying in the seat.

As I've previously said .... a year ago my body would not have stuck a day in him ..... which was why I was real intrigued to get my scan results .... I knew things had improved dramatically, before i even went to Cardiff

As for sh1t shifting ...... reckon we've moved about 8000 ton ..... plus rocks and planings, etc. ....... mostly in the first 2-ish weeks .


We'd just about started to get it looking tidy-ish when we had to dig it all up again to re-bury those two main power cables and drop a water main in with 'em too to get down the site's length.

































finding an unmarked, unknown 4" water main didn't help our cause a lot either and had to radically change the shape of one area ...... damned lucky it didn't get a tooth through it

this was completely buried and then found the pipe run further down the line, a bare 30cm deep and deffo not where we expected it .... didn't exist according to the drawings ..... and Welsh Water




would've made a hell of a mess if we'd pulled it!!!!

one to make you smile .... try updating here with this as a handicap .......



Mr Sparticus, ensuring he gets maximum attention of an evening

[Nobody]

Good to hear you are recovering! maybe slow, but hopefully steady

[v8druid]

Good to hear you are recovering! maybe slow, but hopefully steady

Thanks Boyo ..... yeh it's been a slow old process, but the last 6 months have made a drastic improvement ... as said elsewhere ..... could not have stuck the trip to Ross daily, a year ago, let alone 4 weeks on Wacker .... so I am ecstatic .... long may it continue .... now to try and regain some previous fitness levels, now I can do more ..... the 19yr old head has just got to persuade the body that it's not 60 in 2 months

[v8druid]

so....... having reburied the cables .... after damned near a week's wait for the leccy to come and make some extension joints in 'em, we had two bases to prep for some concrete pads/rafts to prep and a lot of tidying to do ... again !!
Plus two gas tanks to bury and a lorra planings to lay out as sub for the roadway.







oh and a rockery to knock together .....



















the reason the 'Somme' area had been quite such a PITA was the faxct that it was a pinch point between the lake ..... and a bloody septic tank of probably the same age as me ... which had to be steered well clear of .....
Topped by some crappy old cap stones, it had to have a bespoke new cover made for it, which Alex cast on site .... and a fine job he made of it too.

the owner ... a neighbour across the road from the site had had it sucked out and had then proceeded to empty out what wouldn't suck, before we dropped the new lid on ......


















the road forms were the crappiest bits of scrap imaginable and we hadn't have waited so long for 'em th turn up ...... they'd have stayed on the delivery truck .... made a hard enough job serious slog .... but we got there, eventually

The lil tachi is Alex's and it'd truned up same day as the Terex swivel .... nice lil tool and had quite a few hours on it generally tidying here and there, where Mavis couldn't
Bit of an 'acquired taste' .... but nice once you got the feel for the razor sharp sticks



little bit of my topsoil spreading ready for the cultivator/stone bury-er ...... if it ever got dry enough ..... 3 days rain at the end of week 4 had left the place in a seriously soggy state and delayed us dramatically

[v8druid]

Thursday, week 5 saw a hell of a lot of concrete arrive!















Alex and his younger bro., in for the day, dealt with that thank **** .... I spent a few hours down the bottom end with Mavis, topsoil bashing/spreading/call it what you will ... was still pretty 'kin wet in parts and a bit 'uphill' .... with the occasional dash back up to reach some concrete in in places.


Friday got spent having a major square up .... Alex had two weeks work elsewhere booked for Mavis, which'd been arranged several months earlier, so he wanted to leave the place looking half decent, while absent for 2 weeks ....

we alos had to re-profile the top end of the roadway/bank, which'd had to be drastically altered, due to that bloody 4" water main .. that didn't exist ...... so instead of being a cut.......it became a fill job


















everything was leaving site sat. afternoon, so we were both in the next morning, finishing the odds and sods, before Terex got a good wash down and Mavis had a good digging out and swill off .......




before it was bye bye Mavis .... for me at least ..... Alex has been in her all this week, clearing a site for 30 odd houses, elsewhere.




and there you have it ................. so far





Thought I might have a few easy days this last week .... to recover from 5 weeks back 'at work' .... as you've seen previously .. the boss had other ideas !!!!

the 'Drema tripped the 5000 hrs mark Thursday



and Friday, before the heavens opened .... like they looked to be threatening to do .... I got up top to scrat out some soil, to fill her new flower boxes, with the best I could find









before stuffing the Thwaites' skip full with it ........ as it started to rain

sealed off what was left ....






and got the hell down from there, 'fore it turned to sh 1 t

then spent the rest of the afternoon loading barrows from the dumper skip, after getting it as close as possible ..... 10 t of Thwaites would've well and truly knackered the patio slabs for sure

got one filled .... another one to go, but got rained off by five ......



see what it looks like in the a.m. ...... and might tackle t'other one.
Have had Clara all day and I had to cope with two and a half hours on me own with her, this afternoon, while Pam went to her best friend's mother's funeral.

Hell ...... HTF does anyone cope with little uns, all day, day in, day out !! ?
I was knackered and well pleased to see Pam return ..... Clara is a full time job .... she is now so mobile you can't take yer eyes off her for a second!!
Might've been easier if it hadn't been poxy raining and we could've gotten outside ........ she's such a lil' character though

[v8druid]

a couple to make you smile tonight


Clara's new 'preferred' mode of transport .......








one grandad power

[2414.ginger]

Sweet.
You can't beat havin a willing slave to drive you around.

[v8druid]

Sweet.
You can't beat havin a willing slave to drive you around.

LOL