Random reminder

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 8

Random reminder

THE DARING YOUNG MAN . Barley, oats, wheat — Canterbury’s summertime harvest. How the quiet countryside is shattered with the ever rumbling, rambling, churning, turning , > machines that move from farm to farm. Every year it seems that more and more of the harvested grain has to find onfarm storage space. Silos with their different coloured hats — depending on which company built them — dot the countryside, standing like ever present sentry guards in neat rows, passing drivers in their cars hardly having time to count just how many there are before the speed of their vehicles carry them on out of vision. Metal silos are expensive, and so at times there is resortment to the collapsible kind. These are a law unto themselves in the actual erection, and slight hysteria has known to have been the order of the day when this job is in hand. And so such a one was used on a certain Canterbury farm. The finished erected article stood proud under the protection of the east side of a hay barn. Weatherwise, the protection was com-

plete, but realisation of frantic interest in the grain by hundreds of feathered friends made a decision to hoover the ' whole edifice necessary.> >s? He did have some jolly good ideas at times — she was wont to admit privately — and the covering method devised was a good one, albeit difficult to achieve. Orders were given and obediently carried out as the covering of wind-break material was put in place. An old wooden ladder, heaved this way and that, provided access and positioning power, but his jolly good ideas did at times have curious outcomes. For instance, the flimsy outer netting frame could not sustain successfully the said ladder laid across it, plus carrying the weight of a grown man’s body. The voice so recently authoritative wailed in a wandering yell as his body landed gently on the netting, like a trapeze artist having missed his catch. Very little sympathy was forthcoming from his hysterical spouse whose peels of laughter rang out through the otherwise lovely quiet morning air.