Motor cars, mowers, plastic cards and a bat detector

Our new lawn mower arrived on Monday morning. It is an American made Toro Recycler 20637. It is driven on the back wheels and has an ingenious gearing system that means it matches its speed to your walking speed. It also changes from rear bag discharge to mulching on the simple moving of a lever. We are quite excited and can't wait for a little bit of dry weather so we can use it! The forecast is for dry weather from Wednesday, so maybe on Friday ...

The week got off to a disastrous start, weather-wise although from Wednesday to Saturday the weather was superb, topping 30°C on Saturday. Thunderstorms are promised for Sunday!

We took a trip in the rain on Monday to see if Clare's car was ready in Marcillat-en-Combraille (it wasn't) and thence to Montluçon to give Bernard at Mr Bricolage the information he needed to dig out the price and specification for the mulching kit for our ride-on mower.

Tuesday's post brought great excitement. Our Cartes Vitales arrived! Based on what we were told in early May, we were expecting a wait of at least another four months. You will recall the advice we had then - before we had submitted the photographs - was that they are taking an average of five months to issue.

This will considerably simplify a lot of things, especially when I receive the new card that will tie the top-up insurance to the Carte Vitale. Mind you, that photograph is awful - it makes passport photographs look good. The rules for the photograph are, however, very strict - full face, no glasses, no smiling, eyes must be at the level indicated on the screen etc.

On Wednesday we took the MX5 for its two-yearly Contrôle Technique - equivalent to the UK MOT test. When the examiner had finished with the car, he started explaining to me what was wrong. That was good to hear. They only do that if it has passed. If it fails, the conversation starts with "Je regrette ...". It seems that the slightly uneven wear in the back tyres that was noticed two years ago is still there, as is the slight weakness in the front left hand suspension unit. The front brakes beginning to wear is new. Suffice to say that I am not surprised that the problems highlighted two years ago are still there. Mind you, the car has done less than 3000 miles since it was tested two years ago, so there shouldn't be much more wrong now than then. Oh - in case you were wondering, Clare's car hasn't appeared yet, which is a bother, as we have some stuff to go to the recycling centre that won't fit in the little fellah.

I tried the new mower on Wednesday afternoon. It seems to be everything that is claimed of it. The recycling/mulching works fine and the automatic transmission is brill! When working with it, you hold onto a handle that is spring-mounted on the main handle. As you push the handle forward, the speed increases and, conversely, as you pull or release it back it slows down. I think the gearing is rather like the variomatic gears on the old Daffodils. In practice what happens is that as you walk faster than the mower is moving, you push the handle forward, so it speeds up until it has matched your speed, when there is no longer pressure on the handle. As you slow down, the handle moves back and slows the mower. Simple, but very effective.

We were watching a couple of lizards after cutting the grass - three lizards, actually. The female pictured above was receiving a lot of attention from a male and took some time out for a drink of water. Meanwhile, the male who was showing interest in her was also fighting off a rival, whom I shall call David Brent - not because he was acting like an idiot, or even doing any crazy dancing, but because he was in the middle of Slough.

Yes, I know I didn't need a capital S!

Clare's car was waiting at the garage in Marcillat when we passed through on our way to do some shopping on Thursday afternoon. Such good news - it meant we could do a proper shop instead of a small one and, given that we had visitors on Friday, a proper shop was a much better proposition.


Nice job though, eh?

On the way back from shopping in Montluçon, just as we reached the hairpin bends at Marcillat-en-Combrailles, we noticed a coach in front of us attempting a very tight left turn into a side road. It needed about a seven point turn to do it. The reason it was doing that was a bad accident a little further up the road. There was one vehicle between us and the bus and it also turned left after someone had explained about the accident. We followed. A raft of vehicles followed us. The road was narrow and twisty, and we all followed the bus, whose driver seemed to have a sense of purpose. We had no SatNav or map, and none of the junctions were signposted. We were, in a word, lost and at the mercy of the bus driver. About ten minutes into the detour the bus surprised us all by doing a U-turn. Well, not so much a U-turn as a fifteen pointer involving a side lane and a farm entrance. The van behind the bus did the same. So did I. So did the rest of the convoy. We all took a left turn. I was so far ahead of the car following me that I managed to turn off before he could have seen me. It was turning into an interesting game. We reached a T-junction. The bus turned right. The van turned left. I turned green.

I turned left, following the van. The van pulled off the road and its driver got a map out. I did a U-turn and followed the bus. For the less cartographically challenged we were, at this point, in Ronnet. I know where Ronnet is. I didn't know from which direction we had approached it. I went bus-hunting. Before catching up with the bus I caught up with the car that had been behind me before I did my hasty left trying to lose him (I often find that turning a potentially stressful situation into a game makes it less potentially stressful). I followed him through Virlet where he turned right towards Marcillat. I knew where we were at that stage so the rest of the drive was straightforward. In all, the leg of the journey that should have taken about fifteen minutes took well over an hour - but we saw some more of France and it was a pleasant evening.

Still on the subject of cars, the insurance renewals came through and, given that the MX5 had done so few miles, I called our brokers to see if there is a discount available. It seems I can get 15% off provided my annual travel is less than 9000 Kms. According to my calculation is less than 2000 Kms, so I reckon I'm OK. Money saved!

For my birthday last week, Clare bought me a bat detector. Devilishly clever little machine - it reads the bat's ultrasonic pulses, mixes them with a sound close in frequency and plays out the difference, which will be within the range that is audible to humans. We are having a lot of fun with it after dark, I can tell you!
We only have one or possibly two bats visiting regularly, but they are very active! Keeping up with them using the detector is a real challenge.

Speaking of active animals, this is the nest that the swallows started to build from scratch in the workshop just over three weeks ago. It looks like five young in there. It has to be said that our birds are more productive than our vegetables so far this year.

Have a good week.

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