Decoration....its a personal thing!

A couple of days ago, I managed to put all the accumulated crap from the yard into my new trailer, as well as putting the rusty old one into the truck, (what was left of it), and trundle down to the reclamation tip. This is, by comparison to many that I've been to, a civilised affair with plenty of space to manoeuvre. Given my deplorable skills in reversing a trailer, it was gratifying to arrive there and find that no one else was around to see me screw it up several times. I mentioned in an earlier post that trailers are common here, not to mention the ubiquitous Ute, and testosterone is a natural rather than a manicured phenomenon. It is incumbent on any self respecting Occa, Ute driving, beer swilling male, to be able to reverse a trailer through the drive in bottle shop with ease, and....well, lets just say I'm not quite there yet. (An Occa is defined by many as the extent to which a man measures up to the legendary and late Steve Irwin R.I.P, a bloke who was quintessentially Australian by all accounts).
Once I'd off-loaded the concrete bits, the broken garden sunshade, the various other non metallic stuff, I drove round a bit further to the metal skips, where I discovered no less than 3 other trailers with assorted bits that I could have had off them if I'd timed this better. One in particular had wheels on with a LOT more tread on than the ones that I inherited, and I wished that I'd had some tools with me to remove them. In the end, I pulled out an old lawn mower that seemed to have compression, and a frame from a kids kart, with no wheels and no seat!
When I got home, I tried the mower with Wayne standing there... all skeptical, wondering what kind of Son in Law he'd got, a man who went to the dump and brought junk back! I put a little 2 stroke mix in it (provied by Wayne, who was prepared to suspend his judgement that far at least!) and after 3 pulls it burst into life and I thought YES!!! now I'm really cocking a snook.... and then it died. 'No probs Wayne, I'll have it sorted, don't you worry, this is a POSH mower this!' I stripped it, scraped out a couple of buckets of compounded grass from behind the carb, and unblocked tubes etc. With each thing I found, I felt more confident that I'd fixed it, and that I was going to look good. Sadly, so far its failed to start.



Never mind. So what of the other find? I showed it to Phoebe since she's a little less critical than Matilda (who was at school anyway), and hasn't learned much about my limits yet. She instantly and to my delight said yes it was a great find, and that obviously it would need to be decorated. I agreed, thinking red paint would do nicely. Not what she had in mind, as you can see below. I found this later when Daile arrived and Phoebe explained to her that she and I were making a cart, and that she'd decorated it! Nothing left to do! :-)