What a Catastrophic day

OMG!!!!  Little did we know what the day had in store for us!!!. One of those days you wished you had stayed in bed. So.... on with my story.  After running the boat engine for an hour we set off for Colin's a little after 9 am. We had high hopes of the digger having arrived by the time we got there but it was not to be. Instead of hanging around Ian continued to fix the wiring around the garden wall. I started on my usual job of painting doors.




Testing the cables.

  Then by 11 am the digger arrived. The first question we asked ourselves when we saw it was, would it fit past the wall of the house and the garden fence..I think I'm going to let the pictures tell the story.



It will fit. Just





Good job the fence was loose. He manged to just squeeze between that and the conservatory wall.





Finally got it through and into the garden.




The middle bucket was wedged fast and the only way Ian could remove it was to shake it out.




Having a practise run.





Trying to remove a tree root. Then the unimaginable happened!!!!! ( You can see in the picture just the sort of angle Ian had to deal with.)



Thank goodness Ian managed to jump off as it toppled over.




Ian on the phone to the hire company. They were less then helpful. Told Ian to grab a couple of beefy men and between them they should be able to right the digger. Only trouble with that. No beefy men!!!





Ian had the bright idea of adding blocks as he tried to raise it up by using a lever system. The hard bit was to get it high enough to add another block.




With Ian's brawn and a neighbours muscles, the beast was righted once more. No damage to the digger, thank goodness, just a bit of oil leakage from the filler cap. All in all it took the best part of 2 hours hard work. Not something we want to repeat!!

 After leaving it to stand for an hour, to allow the oil to settle down again, Ian turned the key and it fired up first time. He decided to abandon the idea of removing the tree root and concentrate on levelling the mound of soil instead. Cant say I blame him!!
I am sooooo glad today is over. Tomorrow Colin will be driving the thing while Ian shouts instructions. Fingers crossed it all goes okay.