Baggage Handling. A tale of 3 planes, one van, two cars, a tractor and a stiff rope.

As can happen, I arrived at Torp Airport early afternoon on Saturday after 3 flights starting in Casablanca at 2 a.m. to find that my baggage hadn't arrived. I went through the normal business of registering my bag missing and as it was most likely stuck in Copenhagen (because that's were they always get stuck) I was informed that it should be on the next plane later that afternoon.

Nothing so special about that part of the story, and all was going well when I got a phone call mid evening to say that my bag had arrived and they were sending it out the same evening. Shortly before 10 p.m. I got a call from the delivery man asking where we lived. At the second attempt we establised where he was going and agreed, as he was worried about getting up the lane (it's pretty icy at the mo) that I would drive down to meet him.

As I was driving down in the Suzuki, just as I came to the top of the first steep hill down to the road I met a car on it's way up. I stopped and he kindly pulled over to one side. He gave me more space than I needed and promptly found himself with one wheel deep in the ditch (pretty much exactly as I did in the Landrover a couple of years back). His initial attempts to drive out left him with 3 wheels in the ditch, looking very stuck indeed. I explained that I would be back to assist and went to fetch my bag, which was waiting for me at the botton of the lane as planned.

When I got back to the scene of the "accident" we found out that niether of us had a rope so I drove back up and fetched one. Despite it's size, the Suzuki had no problems in pulling the car backwards. Unfortunately, it did just that and nothing else, so after I had pulled him back about 10 Mtrs and 3 wheels were still in the ditch I decided it was time to call in re-inforcements.
The neighbour informed me that he was not in a fit state to drive (being Saturday evening) but that wasn't a problem because he could sit beside me and I could drive. So I drove back up and met him beside his largest, newest and fanciest tractor complete with snow chains on the front wheels. Sitting in the seat I imediately realised that tractors have changed since the Czechs buit me Zetor in the mid 80's. I was almost overwhelmed by the array of displays, buttons, levers. It did have 3 (well 4 as tractors have separate left and right bakes) peddles although you didn't really need to use the clutch.

After a quick set of instrutions, "turn this knob to raise this", "operate this lever to move the loader up and down", "when this says N it's in Neutral", "press this button to go up a gear and press this button whilst holding down this switch to go down 6 gears (it's only got 24)", I was off down the road. Under the experts careful guidance we had the car out the ditch in no time, and despite my tired state I was smiling having sat at the controls of almost certainly the most expensive vehicle I have ever driven....

By the time I got back, Mrs Vl was in bed and sound asleep, and I was the one who been up travelling all night!! On that subject, I promise to get som pics up from my India trip soon.

Basement Hoarders

Strange, very strange....

A couple of weeks before Christmas, during The thoughtful Scotsmans weekend visit I went down to fetch my hiking boots from the shoe shelves in the basement. I was perplexed, to say the least, when I found them both half full of dog food.

Blaming Mrs Vl or TTS or my own daftness, I chucked the food in the bin and tried not to think anything more about it until after Christmas when I was faced with the same issue. This time I was fetching my work shoes, which I had with me in India so they had only been in the basement for a couple of weeks. Later on the same day, Mrs VL and Mum of All (our parents who art in Cork were visiting, more on that later) went through the whole shelf and emptied in excess of 2Kgs of food out of assorted shoes, mostly mine and my father in laws, and more right shoes the left. Even a couple of my wellie boots were full. TTS needn't worry, the couple of pairs of his working shoes that reside with us were left unfilled.

Further investigation found the source of the dog food, a careful hole chewed out of one of the sacks in Peggys food stash. The culprits are still at loose, detective work has led us to believe that it is mice (by the size of the droppings) although we find it hard to believe that they could move such big bits (it's dried food with sizable cubes (by mice standards)) and that they would take it upon themselves to hoard such a stash.

Since then a couple of traps have been baited and set and there have been frequent forrays by our resident predators. Almost certainly sending the cats down there issues little more than a warning, chances of them catching anything are slim, judging by previous attempts.

The problem has not repeated itself, but then it couldn't as we have removed the source of the food stash.