For this to make any sense, you will want to read parts one and two of this story of a mechanical Lazarus.
So, there was my restored Ransomes, all ready to cut grass once again but sadly, in the wrong country. It was sitting in Buckinghamshire in England whereas the grass I wanted to cut is in Switzerland. Thus, the next task was to work out how to get the thing sent over to me. You evidently can’t just post it.
John Gregory told me that in the past, they have used a company called Palletways to move lawnmowers around. This is a company that specialises in transporting pallets of pretty much anything. You get yourself a pallet, put whatever you want on it, give them a ring and they will come and pick it up and take it to where you want it. I had a look at their website and the prices seemed perfectly reasonable. There were just two small problems. The first was that they said they wouldn’t transport engines. I suspected that we’d be able to get over that problem as The Old Lawnmower Company had used them in the past, so they must be amenable to having their arms twisted. The second problem was potentially more of a deal-breaker: they don’t deliver to Switzerland.
There are a lot of companies that are happy to send you stuff anywhere in the EU that won’t deliver to Switzerland. I can only assume that this is because Switzerland is not in the EU, although it has bilateral treaties coming out of its ears. So there are probably bits of paperwork required and administrative hassle that means that although, perhaps, companies are happy to transport goods through Switzerland – to Italy, say – they aren’t prepared to drop goods off in Switzerland. A few years ago, I wanted to buy some Timberland shoes on the Timberland Europe website. Ironically, although Timberland Europe is based in Zug, Switzerland (for tax reasons, obviously), they refused to send me any shoes as they won’t ship to Switzerland. You couldn’t make it up.
It was clear that I was going to have to do some creative thinking. It seemed to me that the best option was to get the lawnmower to within spitting distance of the Swiss border but still just in France. That way, Palletways would have no qualms about doing the job. The only question was, who could I have the Ransomes delivered to? I do know a couple of people who live on the other side of the border, but one is somewhere near Geneva – not really that handy, but workable – and the other has a holiday home even further away and they probably wouldn’t be in it when the lawnmower was going to show up. Not ideal. But then I had a cunning plan. Why couldn’t I have it delivered to a supermarket just over the border 30 minutes away where I go for a major shop several times a year (mainly for the cheap fish)? A supermarket is constantly receiving pallets of stuff and presumably has somewhere to put them. All I needed to do now was to convince the ATAC supermarket in Jougne, not far from the border at Vallorbe, to sign my pallet into its warehouse.
I did have one advantage in this quest. I have always found the staff in this smallish supermarket to be extremely helpful and polite. In fact, so pleasant are they to deal with that a few years ago I sent an email to the manager to congratulate him on his staff and to ask him to thank them on my behalf for providing such top-notch customer service. This is a place where the fresh fish counter will gut and clean your fish for you if you ask them, relieving you of the most unpleasant task associated with cooking fish. The staff are always smiling and cheerful and seem happy to see you – remarkable for a supermarket chain. So, in making my request, I did have a name, an email address and an email chain which might suggest that I wasn’t in fact a drugs smuggler who had hidden several kilos of cocaine in a lawnmower’s petrol tank.
To cut a long story shorter, it turned out that my email never made it to the manager, as he had moved on, and it remained unanswered. So, a week later (I didn’t want to hassle the guy), I rang up and was put through to the new manager, a Monsieur Tournissa. You couldn’t say he was brimming over with enthusiasm at the idea when I had explained what I wanted. But somewhat grudgingly, he said that yes, he would make an exception in this case and do a good customer this favour. I did some bowing and scraping over the phone – after all, this was well worth a bit of bowing and scraping – and hung up having solved my immediate problem.
I agreed with John the date for the Ransomes to be picked up on its pallet, and booked the pallet with Palletways. This process was simple except for the fact that I couldn’t see anywhere on their site where I could specify the collection date. Once the order had gone through, I was breezily told that the pallet would be collected the next day. Disaster! It wouldn’t be ready! There then ensued various emails and phone calls to get the date changed to the date I wanted, for which I was charged the sum of £20. It seemed a bit rich that I should have to pay extra because their website is badly designed, but it was no time to argue. In the scheme of this project, twenty quid is really neither here nor there.
A week later I was just beginning to wonder if someone hadn’t snaffled my lawnmower en route or if the supermarket was going to deny all knowledge of ever having received it – in which case, there wouldn’t be a whole lot I could do about it – when I received an email from the assistant manager telling me that the Ransomes had arrived. I agreed to pick it up a week later when my friend Yves and his Subaru estate would be available. I wasn’t sure it would fit in the back of my Alfa which, although an estate, is only on nodding terms with practicality.
So, a couple of weeks ago, Yves and I drove over the border to Jougne. We had gone by way of a local chocolate shop as I wanted to get some handmade chocolates to thank the people in the supermarket. After all, there was nothing much in the deal for them and there was a lot in it for me so it seemed only reasonable to make some gesture of appreciation. Then the plan was to do some (fish) shopping. There are a couple of local borders near me. The main one is at Vallorbe and this is the one that sees most freight and is by far the busiest. Whilst the French quite often don’t bother to man their side, or if they do, may be eating garlic sausage in their hut for all you see of them, the Swiss are almost always in evidence and do a lot of checking of cars in addition to their systematic lorry checks. Thus the chances that they were going to ask me about the Ransomes when we came back over the border with it were high. And there wasn’t much I could tell them about it apart from the truth, and then they might say, where is the proof of what you say? Did you not just buy this? Or alternatively, VAT needs to be paid on the restoration job, even if you did inherit the mower. Put it this way, there are no conversations with customs officials that you can have that beat no conversation. Your best result is no additional costs, paperwork or fines. A far better idea, it seemed to me, would be to avoid the customs officials altogether and come back over the border at L’Auberson, a tiny village on a backroad where there is almost never anyone to be seen at the customs post. It’s a longer trip home, but it’s very scenic and neither Yves nor I are bothered about making longer trips.
So, we rocked up to ATAC, armed with chocolates, and went to customer service and asked to speak to the assistant manager who, to my amazement, was at work on a Saturday. Some telephoning ensued and we hung around. Then, instead of the assistant manager, a guy showed up with a pallet truck with my lawnmower on it, snuggled up in bubble-wrap and cardboard. We took it out to the Subaru and loaded it in. I proffered the choccies. As I was getting a trolley for the (fish) shop, a smallish, dark-haired man in his 40s appeared, evidently looking for us and clutching the chocolate bag. This turned out to be M. Tournissa himself who was determined to thank me personally for the chocolates. “Fallait pas!” he said. I assured him that it was the least I could do. Having stocked up with fish and wine and butter (surprisingly, better than in Switzerland; not surprisingly, cheaper) we headed off to L’Auberson, winding down through the fir forest on an immaculately surfaced road that is just perfect for biking, or at least it was until they put speed traps on it.
The customs post, such as it is, is on a less-travelled road a mile from the village, round a bend as you emerge from the forest. And there, would you believe it, was a customs official. What?? That must be one of the first times I have ever seen anyone there in years of crossing the border – not through trafficking goods, you understand, but because that road is such a good ride. The good news, though, was that the official in question was busy asking questions of another hapless motorist and he waved us through. Phew! We could now settle down secure in the knowledge that no one was going to start asking us weird lawnmower-based questions and demanding bits of paper that we didn’t have.
We drove peacefully though L’Auberson and were just heading on up to St.-Croix, the barely-a-town at the top of the pass before the col drops down into the valley where I live, when… we were waved over to a layby. What?? This was La Volante, or Douane Volante – the flying customs officers. These are extra customs officers who leap upon smugglers when they least expect it, a mile or two over the border. This was more customs activity than I have ever seen on that road, ever. Did they know we were coming?
What, they wanted to know, were we transporting? I told them about the lawnmower which was apparently of no interest. But we had been shopping, had we not? Oh yes, I said, but I frequently did and I knew all about the quotas and had no more than 2 kg of meat and twelve bottles of wine. And what about the butter, they wanted to know. Did I have more than 2 kg of butter?
Butter? Is butter rationed? Apparently, yes. Before I could answer, the cheery young customs guy said “I’m not going to hassle you for a pat of butter. Off you go.” And that was that. I had exactly 2 kg of butter in any case…
The rest of the journey was uneventful and the Ransomes arrived safely home. We unloaded it and bolted its handle back together. It had been dismantled for shipping. I then went to print out the detailed instructions that John had sent me for starting and running it, as well as the period instruction manual. It’s amazing; even instruction manuals have dated considerably since it was first printed. Something to do with the typeface, the drawings and the fact that it is only in English and not Japanese and Swedish. It doesn’t look as if the Ransomes was greatly exported. We also found, just bolting the handle together, that the bolts are all imperial and not metric. Who in Switzerland has got an imperial socket set or spanners? The whole thing feels completely… Brexit.
We added the petrol as instructed, bled the fuel system, fettled the choke and pulled energetically on the starter cord and the Ransomes roared into life.
You can instantly see that it is a machine from a bygone, non-health-and-safety age as its spinning blades are beautifully exposed and threaten to maim you if you go near the grassbox. Of course, by throttling down as you should, the motor will still run and the blades stop whirring when you bend to uncouple the grassbox for emptying. But you can just tell that these days there would have to be some failsafe switch or safety mechanism that prevented you from unhitching the grassbox if the blades were still turning. They didn’t worry about that sort of thing in the 70s. I never used to give it a moment’s thought back in the day when I used this very machine, or the Atco, its predecessor. I mowed a few strips of grass tentatively, but memories soon came flooding back – the way you need to be nifty with the clutch and how you spin the machine around on the back roller at the end of the strip. What also became apparent was that even on its highest setting, this is a machine for a decent lawn and it cuts very closely for early spring when you need to just take off the top inch or so of grass. Later on, in a few weeks, it will be ideal but at the moment, the grass just isn’t ready for the close attention of the Ransomes.
And so there we have it – a project has come to fruition. The Ransomes sits purposefully in my garage next to the Chinese, constructed-from-cheese, little petrol mower that I have been using for nadgery bits, and the chunky ride-on that deals with most of my grass. When spring gets properly underway I shall be employing it and thinking of my old man as I do so. I know that he, as a man who never threw anything away, would approve of my giving it a second lease of life.