Losing weight
I spent the day of the Six Nations final
undoing rusty bolts and grinding fittings off two large pieces of machinery that
sat in the front belly box and made the old wheelchair lift work. Every time the timbre of the commentary
reached try intensity I had to drop everything and come in to watch. It was in, out, in, out all day. What a great day of rugby and so close for
England.
The wheelchair lift won’t work any more,
but I have liberated a new belly box cupboard in the front of the lorry that
will be very useful as a store for all my cables. The two chunky pieces, one a motor or pump
and the other a cylinder which may have been a pressurised tank of some kind
were very heavy. I could hardly lift the
tank. Well, to be honest, I couldn’t
lift it as a dead lift. When I think of
the years I have driven around with those two huge bits of redundant metal and
of the gallons of fuel I have bought for carrying them, in some ways I am
grateful to the Jobsworth for making me take it all off. Of course it means that I can’t now invite
wheelchair users to tea in the lorry and I can’t contemplate a time when I
might be one myself. If it does happen I
shall have to deal with the issue then.
Together these pieces I have removed must
weigh in at almost 100 kilos. I can just
about lift a person of my own body weight (although maybe not with the pounds I
have accumulated over the last few months). The front axle of the lorry was
overweight by 256 kilos. So say this will now be lighter by 56 kilos, as the
weight I took off was towards the front.
There is still quite a big chunk of metal making up the steps, the lift
itself and a big hydraulic ram that sits across the width of the lorry. I guess
this did the actual push and pull/lift job.
These will be more difficult to remove and I think I will leave them to
the experts here. Paul, my commercial
vehicle engineer, the guy who has kindly let me stay in his yard, says he will
do it on Monday. I am very curious to
know how much these bits weigh as that part of the working is almost all on the
front axle. I am not convinced they will
weigh 200 kilos though. However I did
hear from one of the people I spoke to at VOSA (a much more approachable and
customer-focussed guy called Simon at the Wrexham VOSA place) that they would
allow a vehicle to be 5% over the plate weight without issuing a Weight
Prohibition ticket. Whether the
Jobsworth would take the Weight Prohibition off with that leeway is debatable
though. 5% of 2570 kilos is 128.5 kilos so maybe if the remaining bits weigh
another 100 kilos, all might yet be well and I won’t have to have it re-plated
with all that involves in time and money.
Time will tell and watch this space.
I wish taking my personal weight down was
as easy as grinding off a few bolts. My
belly box is still crammed with too much easy living (perhaps a consequence of
being an old-age pensioner) and yesterday I made a final apple crumble (one of
the few Alexander culinary specialities).
I already had the Bramleys and they couldn’t have gone to waste now
could they? I will ration the crumble to
one portion a day. As you may have noticed
yoga has been rather neglected of late.
It’s just been too cold in the garage yoga space I made to do it in and
there’s just not enough room in the lorry.
That has been my excuse anyway.
So a new personal regime emerges with all
the changes. The chocolate has gone and
the cream has almost gone. Maybe one or
two last portions with today’s crumble.
Phase myself out slowly, that’s the ticket. I bet the adrenalin of all these latest challenges
has taken off a few pounds.
All the best from a road near you,
Mr Alexander