Apologies for the silence since 10th December. I never get flu but have to admit to being so ill for three weeks that some days I couln't even get out of bed and, having started to recover from whatever I had, promptly went down with an infection in my left lung. That took us up to Christmas Day. Slept most of the week until New Year then have been surviving through the snow as have we all.

Ivan is not with us at present due to having fallen heavily on his hip in the snow and is waiting to see a specialist being unable to stand. We really miss him; he's a cheery sort of chap to have around.

On the tractor front Graham, assisted by me and a new recruit, has sorted Daisy May's clunking problem. Two broken shims on the diff. spider eliminated, ineffective brake adjusting parts replaced with new and not a clunk to be heard!  About time too. Dismantling the entire diff. was interesting but this tractor should have been out of the workshop a long time ago. We believe that there is nothing else on the tractor to go wrong but it has fooled us like this so many times that perhaps we should be careful what we say!

This afternoon the last of the new small ends on Laddie's pistons have been reamed and the pistons are in!

Last but not least- we were expecting to have to shut the workshop down for up to six months while we found new premises but this afternoon we have found a highly suitable, much smaller workshop and will be taking bookings for work to be carried out from the start of April. We'll be keeping the spares dept. open through the move, however.

Because we are downsizing we'll need to get rid of loads of tractor parts- for a start a single furrow plough complete with disc at £185 o.v.n.o and a mid-mounted mower for around £250...