Fork handles

The gloomy weather continues. Wet, windy and dark. But never fear - the forecast for tomorrow is for sunshine all day! I do find it hard to believe, but we'll see! 

I went down to Homebase to look for a dung fork, as we used to call them, a long thin- and curved-tined garden fork. Nowadays it seems that they're called manure forks, which is maybe a little more elegant! They are known up here as a graip, though I haven't heard that word for some time. I didn't find one, but I noticed that they were advertising an 'Administrative Sale'. When I asked the garden centre lady what that meant she said that our branch of Homebase, along with 70 others, would be closing. Bad news! She suggested that I tried the 'Country Store' at the Auction Mart.

I drove down to the Mart and found the 'Country Store', and am amazed that I'd never been there before. It has a huge range of farm tools and equipment as well as garden tools, horsey stuff, country clothing - and some manure forks! Apart from the man-sized heavy duty ones at £37.50, they had a lighter range, maybe for gentleman farmers(!) in shades of blue, green and pink! They were less than half that price so I bought one in a charming shade of blue! Perfect for lifting leaves, leaf mould and of course manure, if I had any! It made my Blip today anyway.

Quote of the Day: 'It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn't have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.' - Bill Bryson.