Saturday, 12 April 2008

The wrong sort of pallet

Today, Jackie and I tried to turn an old wooden pallet into a chicken coop. The idea was suggested to us by pekinbantams.com and presented as a cheap, environmentally-friendly alternative to spending £70 or more on a professionally built coop. There were pages of guidance which began with the simple instruction: “De-nail every board and joist and save all the nails”.

After more than two hours of strenuous labour, Jackie and I had a large pile of matchwood and about fifty bent nails. The nail heads are buried well below the surface of the wood and the wood itself breaks and shatters with the smallest pressure. Pallets aren’t designed to come apart.

Jackie and I regrouped and decided to abandon the pallets to their fate at the local re-cycling centre. Instead we scavanged around our own garden and found a few scraps of wood from which we successfully constructed the beginnings of a chicken coop.

Depressing News

There is depressing news from Africa. In Zimbabwe, inflation is rampant, unemployment nearly universal, a large part of the population has fled abroad and the tyrant Mugabe is stealing the election by stealth and perhaps soon by violence: there is a major crisis. But after a conference with Mugabe, South Africa’s Thabo Mbeke has announced that there is no crisis and that everything is tickety-boo. Corruption, cowardice and delusion are clearly as prevalent in South Africa as they are in Zimbabwe. When will Africa finally be free?