Mechanical and Biological

Dr Abacus is right: you can find a video to help you do virtually everything these days. So when my mower wouldn't start and there didn't appear to be anything wrong with the spark plug (which was as far as my technical knowledge went, as I always say my Dad was a car mechanic by trade but it never rubbed off on me) I consulted Youtube and found a film by a bluff Yorkshireman - not that there is any other kind - offering to show me how to service a 400 series McCulloch mower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. Mowing my grass this time of the year is an oddity, I know, but it will encourage the wild flowers come the Spring, or at least that's the idea.

The very first thing I attempted to do demonstrated that I didn't have the right tools and so I bought a box of socket drivers from the ironmonger's in Hornington. However even then none of them fitted the first bolts I needed to remove. I borrowed a very old set from Jack at church who reminded me that as Briggs & Stratton is an American company their bolts will be imperial and not metric. Embarrassingly I have never serviced the mower once in all the years I've had it so it's no surprise that it was mucky to a Stygian degree, and I'm hoping that a mere clean should be enough to make it fire up again. In fact towards the end of the video Mr Yorkshire presents us with a sparkling clean and refurbished mower which still won't work, and which turns out to need a new spark plug. I am also relieved to discover that he does go through reassembling the mower after you've finished servicing it, as I was surveying the growing spread of parts laid out around it and wondering how I successfully I'd remember how it fitted together again.

One thing Mr Yorkshire couldn't have forewarned me about was the mummified frog I found in the bowl I got down off a shelf in the garage so I could wash off the air filter. I don't think I put it there.