A Sloth, Electric Wheelchair, an Old Friend and a Train Ride.
As a special treat for June’s 70th birthday, I managed to get a feeding experience with a sloth at Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire. I had looked on line and the experience was fully booked until August next year. A few days before her birthday, I looked again and hey presto, a slot(h) opened up in August, which I snapped up as fast as my credit card would allow. We set off to Folly Farm and arrived as they were about to open at 10:00 for a 10:30 feeding time. As June has been diagnosed as needing a new hip, I pushed her around in a wheelchair which was fine on the flat and slight inclines. However, became a struggle later on a steep incline and she needed to get out and push the wheelchair (for her stability) while I walked behind her with a walking stick – much to the amusement of some. The feeding experience was brilliant and Natasha – the keeper – was very helpful, informative and knowledgable. Button – the sloth – woke up and eat from June’s hand for quite a while, before deciding she needed to go back to sleep. Well 30 mins awake is a long time for a sloth! We spent about four hours at the park before we too called it a day. A bonus was that visitors could return free within 7 days.
Having realised that a standard wheelchair was going to be hard going over the next few months until the hip replacement, June found a motorised one locally on eBay which was classed as “portable”. Well 23kg of tube and motors is a tad heavy to lift and turn into the boot of my car without a muscle pull, so a bit of woodwork was called for to take some of the strain. The wheelchair had some “ware and tare” to it and a number of alternative nuts and screws had replaced the originals. After a good strip down, clean of metalwork and fabric, re-tapping of threads, new bolts and a hand fabricated battery retaining clip, it is as good as new (ish). It got its inaugural trip down to Folly Farm to take up the free re-entry offer and performed very well, in fact June kept disappearing whenever I stopped to look at the animals. After about three hours, I was flagging even if the battery pack wasn’t.
As part of out 47th wedding anniversary, June booked us on a lunchtime trip on a steam train running from Carmarthen to somewhere north about 30 mins away. A really great time was had by all. The restored engine and carriages are a real work of love. On arrival, we were asked if we were fish or dinosaur; I thought I’d ordered sausage and chips! It turned out that half the train was for children being entertained by dinosaurs (with human operator playing proctologist), while the remaining carriages were for adults chomping on fish, sausage or veggie option and chips. Bizarrely, the gentleman sitting opposite worked for Siliconix in Swansea as an accountant about a year after I left the company to join National Semiconductor in Swindon. Small world or what?
While we were staying in Milford Haven, I remembered an engineer from New Zealand who attended a couple of my PICmicro workshops back some 25 years ago. We lost touch with both Mark and I moving jobs and the me letting the Bluebird Electronics email expire. Mark is a long time member of a pipe and drum band and used to visit Scotland for the world wide competitions and would tag a few days onto his stay to have some one to one training. I sent an email to a band address in Wellington in the hope it was the same Mark and about a week later, I had a response and it was. We exchanged a few emails and much to both our delight, his wife surprised him with a ticket to come to the UK to see their daughter compete in Glasgow. Rhebeka has followed in Marks footsteps and while studying in Scotland, she was taking part in this years competition. Mark then arranged to travel all the way to see us, stay overnight and return back north the following day. Needless to say, there was quite a lot of catching up to do and we eventually retired to another room to save June’s hearing when the conversation changed to techno babble. It was a delightful and completely unexpected catchup covering electronics, home control, intended projects and of course family stuff.
Almost four years ago, we had to have some serious tree lopping and felling due to Ash Dieback disease. At the time, we decided, for financial reasons, to just get the serious road-side hazards resolved. With an additional four years of growth, the trees nearest to the bungalow have become a concern, especially with some of the high winds we’ve had over recent months. I asked the same company back and they monolithed the closest four which were in dropping distance from the bungalow. Their shiny new green aerial platform took Tim almost to the crown of the trees and after 6 hours, the transformation was complete. The lawn needs a bit of attention as the 7 ton platform left some track marks and dents (as I discovered when mowing the lawn). These can be sorted with the odd 20 or so barrows of topsoil and a tamper! At least we can sleep easier when the howling winds come next, plus I have about three ton of logs for the next four years.
