Month: December 2025

Now packed and being shipped. Should be in Marseille within 60 days but should be less.

Shown are the machine itself with 400mm bucket attached, the 200mm bucket, the smooth edge 400mm bucket (could be 500mm) and the post auger. And they upgraded me to a hydraulic thumb, as shown, for free.

I think it looks great! 😀

So far, so good. It’s all mine and paid for so now I’m just waiting for it to be shipped and arrive at Marseille.

I’m looking to clear it through customs myself without using an agent as there’s no duty to pay, just 20% VAT which I’ve already settled. I intend to pick it up from the port on a flatbed vehicle recovery trailer towed by my Kia as the crate only weighs about a tonne, so similar in weight to a car.

I’m assuming there will be loading facilities at the dock eg a large forklift, and the only information I don’t have is whether this will be free or chargeable. I’ve sent two enquiries to the port authorities using their contact form but have received no reply, so no surprises there then, as this is France.

Does anyone know? If not I’ll probably have to give them a call.

It’s a better machine than the original one I ordered which was never delivered and for which I was reimbursed. As shown in the video below, it has a hydraulic ‘thumb’ (behind the bucket which is used for picking things up such as logs and rocks) whereas the other machine had a very basic mechanical one. It also has its hydraulic lines enclosed in its beam which makes them less likely to be damaged.

I intend to build a ‘garage’ for it before it arrives. It’ll just be a temporary structure with a wooden frame and tarp walls and roof covering but I don’t want it to be standing out in the weather in the open when it’s not being used. I’m very excited and can’t wait to get my hands on it. 😀

The other day I watched a video on Youtube about children who grew up in the 1950’s on which I posted a comment which I thought I might share here.

“I was born in 1946. We had a small coal fired boiler in the kitchen on which we used to dry our gloves after snow-balling until the gloves were dry and crackly and then we went out again after our fingers and toes had warmed up enough. We had a fireplace in the dining room and while I was still at primary school because mum and dad were both out at work it was my job to clear out the ashes from the previous evening and set and light the fire after I’d walked home from school.

If it was difficult getting it going I used a copy of the large ‘local’ newspaper to cover the fireplace opening to ‘draw’ the fire with the increased airflow as my dad had shown me how. Sometimes the paper caught fire and I had to put it out… and I was just 8 or 9 years old.

In the school holidays I’d have to pay the Co-Op baker when he knocked. Mum would leave the money near the front door and when I paid the baker he’d give me a little paper slip that showed the amount which mum would take to the Co-Op office to collect our ‘divi’. You had to give your ‘divi number’ when you paid. I still remember ours – it was 16212.

To go to work, my mum went by bike some 7 or 8 miles each way (I’ve just checked it) uphill and downhill and thought nothing of it, or if she did, she never let on because in those days mums never did. My big sister, who’s gone now bless her, used to suffer terribly from chilblains. She taught me to jive at a very early age when rock and roll came out because she was fed up practising just using a door handle.

When she was a bit older she used to go out dancing with a full skirt and lots of petticoats that made it stand out and every time she twirled round she showed her stocking tops. All the girls did and none of them had any problems attracting admiring young men. It’s how things were done in those days.

As well as conkers we used to have amazing marble tournaments at primary school and with honour at stake, nobody would have dreamt of cheating. We also used to have contests with our Dinky cars to see who could make theirs go the farthest across the playground which was smooth newly laid tarmac after the war.

We had a climbing frame in the playground and if you fell off and broke your arm you were whipped off to hospital and held in great esteem afterwards by all the other kids who used to sign and do silly drawings on your plaster cast. No parent would ever have thought of suing the school.

In the holidays we’d go off all day under the leadership of the ‘big boys’ and get back home at teatime with dirty knees and hands, grazes and cuts and bruises from falling down holes and out of trees and be ready to do it all again the next day. We made ‘trolleys’ out of old pram wheels and any bits of wood we could find in our dads’ sheds and go hurtling along with no brakes at breakneck speed steering the front wheels with a length of rope either until it toppled over from turning too quickly or one or more wheels fell off, throwing us on the ground grazing our knees and elbows.

We had cowboys and indians fights and also knights in armour battles, bottom of the road against the top. My dad made me a wooden sword and battle-axe, a shield out of hardboard which he painted white with a red rampant lion and a ‘helmet’ from a strip of old lino held on by elastic at the back with a visor that could be raised and lowered with springy metal studs on each side as the pivots. One day the battle became so feverish an ‘enemy’ from the top of the road whacked my shield so hard his axe came right through my hardboard shield because his dad had made it from plywood. Bad form.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. They were great times, the best of times. Children today don’t know they are alive. I wouldn’t change a thing and remember my old friends from those days from time to time, many of whom are now probably gone. But they’re all still alive in my memories.”

An update for those who have been following the saga of me being scammed on the first Chinese excavator I ordered. I’m delighted to say that I’ve now been refunded in full.

It’s been a huge, time-consuming effort as behind the scenes I’ve been pressurising the Chinese supplier, my bank (Crédit Agricole), the supplier’s bank (JP Morgan in Luxembourg), and the Chinese embassy in London in my efforts to apply pressure from as many directions as possible.

I don’t know whether it’s been as a result of those efforts but I’m pleased to say that both of the sums I paid for the excavator (the initial deposit and the final balance) have now been repaid into my Crédit Agricole bank account.

So that’s good enough for me. I incurred some expenses in arriving at this result but I’m relieved and prepared to write those off to experience and now I can look forward to the second excavator I ordered a couple of weeks ago arriving, early in the new year I think, and getting on with the work I have planned around the house.

I have to say that a considerable weight has now been lifted off my shoulders.

At long last I’ve been able to put together a video of the last full couple of days of my Aus trip during which I explored the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road is a highway running beside the Great Southern Ocean for 241 kilometres between Lorne in the east and Warrnambool in the west in Victoria on the southern coast of Australia. It’s one of the greatest ocean drives in the world and a fantastic tourist attraction affording spectacular views of the ocean, its beaches and the forests and cliffs that tumble down to its edge in many places along its route.

But it’s more than that as it was built between 1919 and 1932 as a memorial to their fallen comrades by Australian veterans who returned from the First World War.

The Great Ocean Road has many spectacular sights and attractions that can take many days to explore fully. However, I only had two days at the end of my Australian trip that took in Melbourne and Sidney, not enough time to do it justice but just enough to stop along the way and take in as many of the main ones as I could. My video shows each one that I stopped at, in order, driving from east to west.