Stumbling around the woods I came across a large bramble patch hiding a little red tractor. It looked very sad - tyres were flat, pipes and fittings missing but mostly complete. Iasked the owner if I could purchase it and he said yes. Smalll sum of money changed hands and it was ALL MINE!! I pumped up the tyres, fitted a new battery, tried to turn the engine but it had seized. I took the starter motor out, turned over the engine with a crowbar, replaced the starter, poured diesel in the cylinder heads and with much grunting the engine began to turn and eventually fired. All excited I jumped up in the cab but the clutch was seized. After much mumbling under my breath and masses of timber, car jacks and ropes and pullies I split the engine from the gearbox to find the clutch was a solid block of rust. New clutch on order - further riviting installments to follow. Photographs to come when I work out how to put them on the blog. Help - can anybody send me a simple message and instructions on how to do this. Please remember that I am useless on a computer so it must be simple and idiot proof!!!!!!!! Thanking you in anticipation!!!!!!

Doesn't time fly. Here i am 68 years old and it only seems yesterday that I was an infant. At the time of my birth, during the second world war, my father was in Lille with the British Expetitionary Force later to be wounded and evacuated from the Dunkirk Beaches. He then went Litchfield Hospital in the Midlands for extensive skin grafting and my mother took me at around three months old by train to see him as he was not expected to live. Fortunately he did and had a full and active life. My first
recollections as a child, around three years old,
think, were the aircraft dog fights which my mother said I found quite amusing but very dangerous and the grey homemade elephant that my aunty made that used to comfort me when stuffed under the stairs during an air raid!! Of course, these were the GOOD OLD DAYS, of dried egg powder, no sweets, no bananas, in fact not much of anything. The next major step for me was going to school in the January, sliding on the snow with my big sister and her friend. It was a mile and a half to school on foot - no 4x4's in those days!! We used to eat our lunch in the air raid shelters listening to the occasional doodle bug and bomber planes overhead. Strange men called Canadians were also in our village and would always give us the odd bar of chocolate, mostly at Christmas. Around about 7 or 8 years old I recall German prisoners of war working in a quarry nearby who were very friendly and would make us toys etc. Time goes on and sweets came off ration and things were more plentiful generally. I am certain my spirit guide was with me then offering protection in those difficult times.
I am having a wonderful birthday and this evening I am going out with my lovely wife for a nice meal. My children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have all wished me a happy birthday which is priceless - and as a cherry on the cake, I have won some money on the premium bonds!! On my spritual side, I have a friend and his wife coming for some meditation and he needs some spritual uplift. Today I have bought new sage and a native American CD. The other day, completely out of the blue, a friend from Berlin of some 35 years found me on the blog - we exchanged family news and it was wonderful to hear from them. I now hope to use the blog to keep in touch from now on. For my German readers a small sonet, which I read in what was East Berlin in Spindlefild on a billboard, reads:
Est ist furling und ich bin frei - translated reads:
It is spring and I am free - and that is me - as free as a bird.