(5.1) A labour of love or a mere addiction . . . ? Today was a day for slow motion, slow enough to get the jobs done and slow enough not to raise a sweat! The animals were still alive and I doubt that they missed me one jot. They ate, they slept, they grazed, they slept some more, while their minion (me) undertook the dirty jobs. There are a couple of pictures below showing the llama sitting position that provides a modicum of air-circulation. The plants were watered, the paddling pools topped-up, and the chickens let loose to scratch in the compost. The speedo cable arrived today. Having taken the old one off the bike, and released all the instruments to install the new cable – it was the wrong one. I ordered the correct one, of that I am 200% sure, but this new one is too short and the fittings are different. I also found out that my eBay-purchased back-tyre for the bike won’t be delivered until early next week, which called for a trip into the local city to postpone the MOT for a week. I needed to purchase some more birdseed from an emporium round the corner from the signmaker so I dragged him away from his non-productive, activity-free afternoon and had a blast through the country side back to the farm. He’s a Muslim convert and Ramadan has just started so I couldn’t even offer him a brew when we got here! After the signmaker had departed the animals were next on my list. No problems at the beginning but Robbie became somewhat confrontational and we had a full-blown pushing and shoving and spitting session at the end. I thought he wanted to play but he wanted to bite! Male llamas do that, to other males, so a little bit of male bonding occurred until I decided it was going a bit too bitey and walked away. Llamas rarely bite but males do have six hooked fighting-teeth and I thought it best to avoid finding out exactly how sharp they were! Breakfast could be interesting though. I’d previously volunteered to have a look at the blowing exhaust on the Glassmaker’s car and an hour was spent jacking it up and crawling underneath, many, many times while searching for the correct tools. In the end there was nothing I could do other than draw him a diagram of the problem. It had rusted where the centre pipe slots into the front pipe, and the two securing clamps had rusted solid too. He’s going to roar into the local one-house town and get it sorted. With an MOT imminent a running-repair is a waste of time as it would fail the MOT. I’ve discovered a rattle on my bike caused by the loss of a rubber grommet (rubber fatigue most likely) that grips a small metal ‘foot’ on the inside of the speedometer housing, when securing the speedometer housing onto the petrol tank. Sounds like a bag of spanners! But only a £2 replacement. When I fall apart I want everything to collapse at the same time!! None of this ‘bit-by-bit’ malarkey. The Business point? Maintenance. After all the crawling and levering and standing and kneeling, feeding and walking, and driving and riding, I feel a shadow of my younger self and I should take better care of my body and mind. But I(we) don’t. There’s no time, no opportunity, no need, no desire, no motivation . . . until something goes wrong. It’s easy to follow the old adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And you may want to weigh the costs of maintenance against the price of repair, if and when it ever happens. Equipment suppliers like you to maintain the equipment, as the routine maintenance usually requires some parts to be fitted at regular intervals – oil filters every 5,000 miles, for example. These days with money being as tight as it is, a review of your maintenance budget and requirement might be appropriate but, beware of the warranty periods – if anything does go wrong with the equipment and you haven’t maintained it or, even worse, had someone else maintain it other than the supplier, you may void your warranty, or even fall foul of the contract terms and conditions. The Daily Llama
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 22:29:00 +0000
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