- Joined
- Friday July 10, 2009
- Location
- Little Feckwittering-on-the-Moor
... from SWMBO yesterday whilst I'm out with the boy, trying to convince him that he does want something for his birthday :?, to tell me that the "lawnmower is making a funny noise, smoking and sparking" - I get home to discover that indeed the lawnmower has breathed it's last - bloody typical! About 3 cuts from the end of the season 
So research springs into action last evening and I narrow down to 2 or 3 to look at (actually 4 or 6 because Husqvarna helpfully make the same things in yellow and call it a "McCulloch" or orange and call it a "Flymo") - boy oh boy is this the wrong time of year to be attempting to buy a lawnmower!
Went to the nearest town (15 miles), into the DIY shed and they have this monster thing, way too big and heavy for SWMBO to be left in charge of (rather she'd say it was and leave it for me) or a flimsy piece of trash - which narrowed my target list to one (or two counting the identibranding). So into the garden centre where they have zero (yup count 'em - zero) mowers of any description.
Seeing as we live in the middle of nowhere, the next town is 30 miles in one direction or 28 in the other :x the one 30 away is marginally bigger and has a different DIY shed and a garden centre... selection as before, but with prices 20% higher.... so it's now as little as 40 to Newcastle... same selection of DIY sheds, but bigger branches... same selection though... anyway in Homebase there was a bloke who jogged in to the lawnmower department and was clearly in the same predicament as me... we compared notes and then his phone went - his missus has a lead on the same model that I'm looking for in the third circle of hell branch of Argos - the Metro Centre (on a Sunday afternoon! - it's a hateful place at the best of times). I must have got there first because they had 2 in stock when he took the call and 2 when I arrived... got the gnome to bring it out. Box is still sealed, there's no grass collector box. So I said, bring the other one out... he did - grass-collector present, but NO MOWER! Took me an age to convince him to move the grass collector into the other box so I could buy it.
As I'm walking out of the shop, in walks the bloke I'd left at Homebase, with a reservation number for the mower like the one I'm walking out with... I didn't have the heart to tell him that all they had was a box with a handle in :lol: So hot-footed it the "quick" way home - another 65 miles - to assemble it and cut the grass (before Pygmy tribes move in).
140 miles to get a pedestrian item like a bleeding lawnmower! Is it against the law for shops to hod stock these days?
So research springs into action last evening and I narrow down to 2 or 3 to look at (actually 4 or 6 because Husqvarna helpfully make the same things in yellow and call it a "McCulloch" or orange and call it a "Flymo") - boy oh boy is this the wrong time of year to be attempting to buy a lawnmower!
Went to the nearest town (15 miles), into the DIY shed and they have this monster thing, way too big and heavy for SWMBO to be left in charge of (rather she'd say it was and leave it for me) or a flimsy piece of trash - which narrowed my target list to one (or two counting the identibranding). So into the garden centre where they have zero (yup count 'em - zero) mowers of any description.
Seeing as we live in the middle of nowhere, the next town is 30 miles in one direction or 28 in the other :x the one 30 away is marginally bigger and has a different DIY shed and a garden centre... selection as before, but with prices 20% higher.... so it's now as little as 40 to Newcastle... same selection of DIY sheds, but bigger branches... same selection though... anyway in Homebase there was a bloke who jogged in to the lawnmower department and was clearly in the same predicament as me... we compared notes and then his phone went - his missus has a lead on the same model that I'm looking for in the third circle of hell branch of Argos - the Metro Centre (on a Sunday afternoon! - it's a hateful place at the best of times). I must have got there first because they had 2 in stock when he took the call and 2 when I arrived... got the gnome to bring it out. Box is still sealed, there's no grass collector box. So I said, bring the other one out... he did - grass-collector present, but NO MOWER! Took me an age to convince him to move the grass collector into the other box so I could buy it.
As I'm walking out of the shop, in walks the bloke I'd left at Homebase, with a reservation number for the mower like the one I'm walking out with... I didn't have the heart to tell him that all they had was a box with a handle in :lol: So hot-footed it the "quick" way home - another 65 miles - to assemble it and cut the grass (before Pygmy tribes move in).
140 miles to get a pedestrian item like a bleeding lawnmower! Is it against the law for shops to hod stock these days?
