So having bought my new trowel from the hardware shop yesterday, I thought I would be very clever and condition the wooden handle to soaking in some cheap corn oil which I keep in the kitchen if I need a cheap oil for oiling purposes (e.g. for my kitchen shredder which is often forgotten about) So I put the trowel handle down in a narrow glass of oil and left it outside for abut a day. Then I consulted the web to inform myself about oiling the wooden handles of gardening tools to keep them in good condition. The advice that I got on the web was that I was doing exactly the wrong thing as these oils are non volatile, can go rancid over time and can oxidise and break down creating a bad smell. Unlike drying oils, cooking oils do not harden, creating a surface that attracts dirt and becomes unpleasant to hold. All the advice is to use a specialist oil such as linseed oil, Danish oil, teak oil and so on. The difficulty is that these oils can cost several times more than the implement they are designed to protect and one has to wonder if they worth while unless you have a real quality hand tool to protect. So I looked in my garage and happen to have some teak oil around so I have decided to let the cooking oil treatment soak in for about a day and then finish off with a really good protective volatile oil as all of the sources of gardening advice recommend. It is always a good idea to clean and oil tools after every single use but normally one is quite weary after a session’s gardening and one is desperate to get inside and have a well earned cup of tea. But now that I am well and truly back into gardening mode again, I am filled with good intentions to keep my gardening tools in good condition. I used to find that the old fashioned soap-filled ‘brillo’ pads were excellent in removing a light rust or staining but I find these much more difficult to find in the kinds of shops that I frequent and I am loathe to make a special journey just to find them. Having said that, they are always useful to have in stock, not least if you have a burnt pan in the kitchen to re-condition but a short term expedient are those foam pads with an abrasive side that can be laced with some cream cleaner. I suspect that the old fashioned engineers used to make constant use of the proverbial ‘oily rag’. Engineers and mechanics traditionally used an oily rag for cleaning greasy machinery, protecting metal parts from rust, and applying lubricants or finishing oils, with old cotton clothing favoured for being lint-free. They also serve as a staple for wiping hands and managing service fluid spills in workshops. Key reasons for using an oily rag are that a lingering layer of oil from the rag protects metal surfaces, tools, and equipment from moisture and oxidation, They are an inexpensive, reusable, and efficient tool for wiping down machinery and removing oil residue. White rags, in particular, allow engineers to see metal shavings or dirt in hydraulic fluid, aiding in diagnosing equipment problems. I wonder if these old fashioned skills and practices are now dying out completely? For this reason, I never throw old white cotton vests but deploy them when I can remember as garden tool cleaning aids. I am also asking some of my close friends if they can cast any abandoned cotton clothing in my direction for the same purpose.
The morning turned out to be reasonably entertaining. Having picked up my newspaper, I made a quick saunter into Wetherspoons where I thought I would meet up with ‘Seasoned World Traveller’ from my park-roaming days and we exchanged a few pithy observations about the state of world politics. A day later than is normal, I turned up at my ‘Gifts of Love’ cafe where I bumped into one of the volunteers who I know quite well and another whom I may have seen before as she worships in the same church as do I. I generally purchase enough car parking time for a couple of hours and this gives me time for a slow peregrination up and down the High Street. I was just on the point of purchasing a shirt in exactly my size and the colour I would have chosen when I realised it was one of those without buttons on the sleeves but relied upon cufflinks – this being the reason it wasunsold, I suppose. I then purchased a floor cleaning preparation that I know that my domestic help particularly likes also bought of the ex Marks and Spencer ‘Harvester’ range of butter dishes with covers which I intend to use for the hard cheeses that I buy. Having texted my American friend, she accepted my invitation to come and share a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner with me tomorrow i.e. quite a traditional Sunday meal and we will prepare the veg together. I had promised to play her a copy of the Puccini opera of ‘La Bohème’, courtesy of YouTube, and have found a production in which the stage design was by Franco Zefferelli and Mirella Freni sings the part of Mimi. I am by no means an avid watcher of TV but the offerings this weekend seem particularly dire. I have the stimulating choice of watching hours of snooker on one channel with ‘Top of the Pops’ from 34 years ago on another and, of course the mindless game shows. Even some of the films date back to the 1940’s and it no wonder that TV watching is declining into an almost death spiral. These days, I am often quite contented listening to Classic FM and giving the newspapers a slow read although I have bookcases of serious books into which I ought to get stuck. Looking along my bookshelves I found a book I never knew I had by Francis Wheen entitled ‘How Mumbo Jumbo conquered the World’ I opened it at random and found some passages in which American politicians berated those who they thought were doing them harm – in this case the Japanese. But the book was written in 2004 ie. 22 years ago and could have been written by Trump yesterday – I even found the phrase in it to ‘Put America First’