One Skip Later ..... And Other Thoughts:

Well, be fucked ....! Here's what I started with. (Spot the Nigger!)






And here's what I bought.







Six foot high, that bastard is. Meant I had to man handle, heave, at least chuck just about everything I had into it. Bastard.

Best bit is; I still have plenty left out there. And that fukka's levelled over. Couldn't fit another gallon oil can in it. And don't talk to me about 'Boarding up the sides' either. That fucking thing crept into the place I needed it, Only with me lifting an overhead wire the extra couple of inches with a damn hay rake!

Their contract states, 'Don't Overload'. My eye says, 'I don't need the drama, or the Electrician!' FFS.

Just thought I'd show ye this, as I realise I've been a bit quiet of late. This is much to do with it. Working like a slave while it's, at least, not chucking it down here.

But, the Ash and Sycamore leaves are dropping now. As are the temperatures and day hours. I've had the stove lit for two or three nights now. Tonight it hasn't crossed my mind.

But, Rosie and Donks are out there, right now, with their heads amongst a bale of hay. I pulled that out of their 'Back Up' store, today. I'll pull another bale tomorrow. Jesus; Where is this going? Where will I find, let alone afford more hay?

Pat's cut his fields. It kills me to see the edges left. All that stuff my horses would die to get at. His cattle would taste, trample and shit on. " The other mans grass ".

Different creatures eat different ways, see? Sheep eat so low down they'll starve a horse. Horse will starve a cow. Cows just wander about, munching about 1/10th of what they tread and shit on into shit. Then, ye can chuck their own shit onto the same ground, and they'll repeat the whole shit on that field.

Horses don't like to eat grass that's grown through their own shit. Much more of this and I'll be going right back to my roots; Travelling, just to find verges to feed the damn horses from!

Oh well. This sort of shit certainly puts all the old, citified bullshit into perspective. Be that Country Life, Moaning Farmers or Witchcraft. It all ends up tied into the seasons, when ye life's dependent on the land and thus seasonal moods.

And we've just had one of the worst ones.

An 'Interesting' time lays ahead.

Costing Culture Shock

I don't know how this'll go down with most of ye. Because I obviously have no idea of what experience any of have had of Scrap Metal. But, suffice it to say that 'Scrap' is a virtual cultural icon amongst Gypsys. It's money. And money to be found laying around all over the place. Discarded by 'normal' people.

Why do ye do that? I've often wondered, throughout my life time. You'll hire a skip, at no small expense to start with. then ye'll start half filling it with what amounts to fucking Cash! It's like ye going through ye own pockets and slinging pounds, shillings and pence into a big tub that's already cost ye a small fortune to hire. Just to have someone take it all away and dump the fucking lot.

And that's how I ~ in my own, small way ~ and many, many more 'Professional' Gypsys and such made a living. By going round, dragging all that shit back out of your skips. Thus we'd actually make more room for ye to dispense with ye rubble and shit. But we'd dig out all the metal ye were chucking out.

We'd then sort it, into various grades and types of metal. Separate and 'Clean' it. (I don't mean dust it and polish it! Just remove any non metal components. Or remove the tin handles from alli' saucepans, eg.) And then we'd take it all down to the Scrap Yard and come away with a big smile and a nice pocket full of cash.

I made my living doing this. I even made huge bonuses, whilst primarily working at some other job. Simply because I have this genetic instinct, born into my very blood, to collect scrap metal.

And now I'm in Eire. And I have a huge, collapsed and derelict outbuilding. And the Biggest fucking skip they can supply. And I'm breaking my back emptying the contents of the one into the other. It's doing my fucking head in! It's doing my head in because probably fifty percent of what I'm dragging out and skipping is Scrap Metal!

FFS! I've just paid over £300 for a fucking skip. Now I'm slinging shit loads of perfectly good scrap in there. And I'll be grateful when I'm done and the man comes to take the lot away. And he'll just dump it in a land fill. No One will come sorting through it. The metal will lay with the old feed sacks and the plastic. This just seems simply and intrinsically Wrong, to me.

But, there it is, ye see? Different country. Different culture. Different economy. You'd be hard pressed to go dig up a sack of peat, for ye garden. Here ye'd be hard pressed to find a Smelting Works. We simply have no industry geared toward the rendering of 'any Old Iron'. Thus no body has any use for it. It's worthless here and not worth enough, over there, for us to ship it across.

So, we bury it. And here's me, shaking my head in despair, as I cart load after load of what I've always seen as money, and slinging it into my own skip, which I've already paid handsomely for. England? This amount of scrap would likely have paid toward the cost of the skip. In Eire? I just hope so much of the shit doesn't take up so much room I'm left needing another damn skip!

That'd just be taking the fucking piss!