Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Clothes Line Saga: Series 2: Episode 2
Have now made a follow up visit to Homebase to buy a third hank of clothes line. I also had a browse around to see if I could find something to join two lengths together in a less obtrusive way than I had managed until then. Maybe there would be a little bit of mild steel one could crimp over the two ends: one should get quite a decent grip in the softish plastic outer coating. As it turned out, there was nothing like that but I did light upon the idea of pinching the two ends between a couple of large washers, so bought one packet of washers and one packet of five bolts. Which last turned out to contain four bolts and five nuts, but not a big enough problem to be worth cycling back to Homebase and attacking the customer services desk.
Out in the garden, removed the short, outer length of line from the rotary frame and installed the new, longer length, which turned out to be long enough. Fixed the outer end in an entirely satisfactory way using the washer wheeze. Left the other two joins with their temporary fixings while the thing stretches and settles down.
So we look to be getting a reasonably satisfactory outcome - although for perhaps twice the outlay we could have got an entirely new, ready lined rotary. Next time I am at Homebase I shall check.
Chores out of the way, was able to resume tweeting on the morning clockwise circuit of the Horton Lane walk. In Horton Lane there was a close encounter with a green woodpecker; not rare around here but it was unusual for me to get so close to one. Then back in my own road, for the first time for a long time, came across half a dozen sparrows tweeting away in the lower branches of an open bush. And back home got a proper tweet in the form of four or five redwings sitting on top of the small oak tree overhanging our small ponds. I did not have a clue what they were, but for once the RSPB identification tool came up very quickly with a convincing answer.
I close with a factlet, drawn from the Economist Book of World Factlets. Japan is two thirds forest, a reasonable proportion of that two thirds being virgin forest; a lot more forest, as a proportion, than almost all other countries. This was something of a surprise to me. I had thought that Japan was a very crowded place and the bits that were not battery houses for people or paddy fields for rice were volcanoes and such like. My next thought was the that economist team had made a mistake - easy enough when you are collecting up lots of factlets from lots of countries. But the two thirds figure was amply confirmed by Google. So my first thought was entirely wrong.
Out in the garden, removed the short, outer length of line from the rotary frame and installed the new, longer length, which turned out to be long enough. Fixed the outer end in an entirely satisfactory way using the washer wheeze. Left the other two joins with their temporary fixings while the thing stretches and settles down.
So we look to be getting a reasonably satisfactory outcome - although for perhaps twice the outlay we could have got an entirely new, ready lined rotary. Next time I am at Homebase I shall check.
Chores out of the way, was able to resume tweeting on the morning clockwise circuit of the Horton Lane walk. In Horton Lane there was a close encounter with a green woodpecker; not rare around here but it was unusual for me to get so close to one. Then back in my own road, for the first time for a long time, came across half a dozen sparrows tweeting away in the lower branches of an open bush. And back home got a proper tweet in the form of four or five redwings sitting on top of the small oak tree overhanging our small ponds. I did not have a clue what they were, but for once the RSPB identification tool came up very quickly with a convincing answer.
I close with a factlet, drawn from the Economist Book of World Factlets. Japan is two thirds forest, a reasonable proportion of that two thirds being virgin forest; a lot more forest, as a proportion, than almost all other countries. This was something of a surprise to me. I had thought that Japan was a very crowded place and the bits that were not battery houses for people or paddy fields for rice were volcanoes and such like. My next thought was the that economist team had made a mistake - easy enough when you are collecting up lots of factlets from lots of countries. But the two thirds figure was amply confirmed by Google. So my first thought was entirely wrong.
# posted by Jim @ 3:59 AM 
