Zen-like patience - James May re-assembles a lawnmower

An introduction to developing a Zen-like patience.

If you like this sort of thing, this is a perfect exemplar of precisely the sort of thing you will like. If you don't, ditto.

This lawnmower has 331 bits. I doubt this is intentional. Neatness would either have added an extra two bits, washers would have done, to get an even 333, or left out a bit, one must be otiose, to get 330.

I'm not sure if there's any connection to deep complexity, but the human body starts with 206 bones (well, at the arbitrary point of birth, clearly the zygote has none), and ends up with 350. For a lawnmower to come in at 331, does, if you're suggestible in this way, suggest some lawishness must be involved somewhere.

I could never do this. The number of fiddly bits and stages involved would drive me to distraction. That James May had only one period, of a mere 30 minutes, involving blasphemy, does, indeed, establish that his patience is close to that of a zen master. If you haven't the patience even to watch the demonstration (compressed), of deep patience, it was the piston rings that led to the blasphemy.

It's also a good demonstration of masculinity. It's unlikely that many people find masculinity puzzling, as James observes, it's more femininity that has that reputation. Still, if you do, this helps.

There's the huge grin, showing deep inner peace, at various stages, where a sense of completion is achieved. This may not simply be masculinity, but part of the 'Do' ( Korean 도, Japanese 導 or Chinese 道 [or 道], the 'way-of' or 'path to' working. The way-of-working needed to do something, in this case, long and fiddly.

There's also the 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' style use of the assembly, and stages of the assembly, as metaphors for life.

The sharp blade is supposed to cut business cards. It would have been sufficient to cut just one card, just the once. It is, of course, impossible for anybody who started life as a boy, to do this. He had to cut it three times - for the camera. Probably two or three more times for himself, off-camera.

The film also, incidentally, complies to the Dogme 95 dogma.

Thanks to James Gander  for introducing this to me.

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https://plus.google.com/10898143749068217…/posts/c8VWeqsAThg

I probably shouldn't be impressed by the Cape Town water department, but I am.

I probably shouldn't be impressed by the Cape Town water department, but I am. No doubt they were only doing their job, but I think we can still be impressed by a job well done.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, a Saturday, a water main burst in Observatory. It was at the top of Station Road, just below the traffic lights on Lower Main Road. Somebody who saw the damage said that it looked like the aftermath of a small earthquake. We don't get earthquakes in Cape Town much, the last minor tremor was in Tulbagh, 121km away, in December, and, the last big earthquake, the biggest in South African history, was a 6.3 in the same place, in 1969. So he must have known what they looked like from photographs.

It must have been in the early hours, because we still had a trickle at six in the morning.

I'm not sure the first time they were told about it, but they had the area cordoned off, with men working on it, by nine. When we went past at midday, the men had dug a deep trench. When we came past again, at three in the afternoon, they had a huge back-hoe digging an even bigger trench.

The water was back on again at about five.

We are very short of water, at the moment, not, fortunately, anything like as bad as further North, where there is a terrible drought, but the dam water levels this year are the lowest they've been over the past five years, though the levels did build up considerably in February, despite it being the dry season. There's a picture of the levels at our largest reservoir, 'Theewaterskloof' below.

So it's important that bursts are repaired quickly, and good to know just how quickly they can be repaired, and how good our water department is at their jobs. Congratulations!