It was fascinating watching the digger at work. Or to be more exact, watching the skill of the driver. It certainly has not taken long to dig out and cart away the ramps which were built for the temporary bridge which served us so well in Hatton after the December floods. I stood for quite a while today watching as the driver moved earth about then patted down the bank on Station Road. I took a few pictures to try to capture the activity – but, as they say, you would have had to be there….
It certainly looks as if the field will be ready for the Hatton bonfire on 2 November. I do hope someone takes up thechallenge set by Joanne Baybut on the HARA Facebook page, to take responsibility for the bonfire this year at the firework display.
I think it must be the wee boy in me coming out, this fascination with excavating machinery. I remember when I was very little, perhaps 3 or 4, there was a big machine working in Market Street in Brechin, near where we lived. I would stand for ages watching as the big scoops of earth and rubble were dumped in lorries. I seem to remember that I called the big digger, a “spider”, I don’t know why. And for years afterwards I would call the gap-site where it had been working the “spiders web”.
It was not just the movong of earth that keep me watching. It was exciting watching the digger crossing the burn and making its way up to load the lorry. Just watching the tracks ploughing their way through the mud and over the burn gave me a new appreciation of the incredible usefulness, in the mud on the Western Front during the First World War, of the newly invented tanks. But I am getting off the subject.
What skill the driver has, getting his machine in just the right place to scoop, lift, dump or pat. A big powerful machine it may be, but he certainly made it look like a precision instrument.