Wood, glorious wood!!

Today's dramas were a carry on from yesterdays discovery that Vic had a flat tyre. As we were in the local supermarket car park 5 miles from home at the end of a very long but productive day at Red Kite. Thankfully my beautiful and oh so patient wife who is far more organised than I will ever hope to be had put a can of tyre inflator in the boot. Vic being a dual fuel beast does not have a spare wheel but a LPG tank where the spare would be. The sound of the puncture repair escaping did not bode well but we made it back to Rock HQ.

Repairs would have to wait, the lack of oil for the Rayburn and electric to the new super duper cooker has meant the small log stash has depleted to zero as its used for both cooking and heating. Yesterdays fuel was salvaged from the lane and Bonsai Mountain by Super Grandma who collected some of Spotty's treasures from the local geography. Spotty feels compelled to pick up a log every time he passes the pile, say 3 times a day, meaning over a 1000 logs are strategically placed in case he ever feels like a piece of wood to chew.

Being short of time (cheers Vic, then theres decorating, gardening, usual routine and a massive plan to make the workshop more useful) and lacking the ability to track all our missing timber help arrived in the form of Steve the logs who dropped off a lorry load in return for half a pig, both of us sure we had got the better deal. The small mountain of wood was carefully chopped, graded, stacked and stored. The cottage is now as warm as a sauna, even with every upstairs door open. Bliss.

Attention turned to Vic, mine to fix the puncture, Trevor's as something extra to hump. The tools in the top pic were all used one way or another in an attempt to get the wheel off the stricken car. Finally I had to concede defeat and admit that no combination of Halfords pocket socket sets, garden fork, hand axe and tack hammer was going to persuade the wheel free. Unbelievably I managed to persuade Steve the tyres (yes really) to forgo a second read of the Daily Sport, leave his tyre emporium and come and relieve Vic of his damaged tyre. This may have had something to do with the fact that he wanted to witness first hand a shitland mate with a Volvo and learn how I ever thought a garden fork would get a tyre off (clue, its to do with levers)
After much grunting Steve took the tyre down town. An hour later I collected a newly booted alloy and given the post mortem results of the broken rubber, it had burst due to an impact on the tyre wall. That would be like a pothole type impact I enquired. Just like agreed Steve. Just like the swimming pool depth ones you have in your lane.

Carriageway repairs have now been added to the jobs list.