Scrap - where does it all come from? Last week we decided it was time to get rid of the rather large pile of scrap that had been accumulating over the winter as part of the Spring clean. There were at least three bikes in the pile and I hadn't ridden a single one of them! With the car weighted down with a tonne of batteries and a full trailer of scrap strapped on we set off for the local scrap yard.
On arriving at the yard we drove down a very narrow alleyway of scrap about 20 feet tall on both sides with no way out having been hemmed in by several tipper trucks and white vans. There was a large mechanical grab moving piles of scrap around which alarmingly kept getting a bit too near the car for my liking and I was fully expecting the grab to pick the car up and move us onto the nearest pile! After moving on and off the weighbridge several times with much arm waving going on in different directions, unhitching and rehitching the trailer and attempting to do a 50 point turn in a very narrow space and getting offered some money for the car we were sitting in - I don't know how they thought we were going to get home; the scrap and batteries were added to the pile and we left a little lighter! The price for scrap metal at the moment is very good so it was worth the wait and it just goes to show that nearly everything can be recycled and reused!
The last couple of weeks have been taken up with lambing and we now have twenty five Herdwick lambs out in the field. The Herdwick sheep traditionally lives out on the Cumbrian Fells, so they are quite a way south in Northamptonshire. It's all got too much for this lamb, so it's decided to have a sleep on mum.
Sadly one of the ewes died, so her two lambs were orphaned but we do have a willing helper who likes to give them their bottle feeds. They will hopefully go out into the field with the rest of the sheep shortly as they are getting very bouncy now and want to play!
I think we can safely say that Spring has arrived: it has warmed up, there are lambs playing in the fields and the daffodils have eventually come out after spending weeks tightly wrapped up.
We were rather puzzled this week to find the Environment Agency has reclassified our butty Naples as a 'Houseboat' for licensing purposes. Naples is a 1929 Small Northwich butty, originally horse drawn she worked with a number of different motor boats carrying all sorts of cargoes until her retirement. Now I am sure the people at the EA have thought very hard about this but I do have a couple of questions for them about their definition of a 'Houseboat' (a licence for which, unsurprisingly, costs about 10 times more)
This is a picture of butty Naples
And this is a picture of what I generally think of as a houseboat
They are both unpowered craft over five metres as per a class 12 category. But are they both 'Houseboats'? Hopefully we will find out soon.
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