Bavarian Mowing Woman

I wonder if anyone knows the origin of the children's nursery rhyme? I cant find anything on the web.

Yesterday evening we got a call from the DIY store that the lawn tractor was fixed. Well, sort of fixed. As the machine is Angie's I insisted she came along to collect it and listen to what they said.

So we set off with the horse trailer to Memmingen. The nice friendly guy who does the repairs who apologised again for the huge delay caused by the loss of the spare part delivery from the manufacturer. While the new part can start the tractor it is not behaving as it should do and if he has to order the correct part it could take even longer. However he was leaving the business next week and he didn't reckon his replacement who is being trained and only knows a bit about small hand pushed mowers, had a chance of doing the repair which would mean the thing having to go back to the manufacturer and be away for 2 months!

He suggested we put up with the 10-second delay in starting and in the autumn get the proper repair done. It's all covered by warranty.

Took the opportunity of being in Memmingen to stock up with pool chemicals and some food from Lidl. I spent most of the time sitting in the car boiling away in the heat. There are few carparks designed for people with a large trailer and certainly no supermarket ones.

I was parked outside a nearby "Drink market". This is a phenomenon I only know in Germany and you will see them everywhere. They only sell drinks but 99% of the business is beer, water and then soft drinks (Cola, Lemonade etc) and then fruit juices. All in glass bottles or at least multi-use plastic bottles for some of the cola types. You can, of course, buy single bottles but 99% of the customers buy full cases, usually 20 x 500ml beer and soft drinks and 6 x 1 litre water bottles.

I had in the past noticed that this particular market seemed to be very popular and today I saw why. They have amazing customer service. As soon as a car approaches one of the parking bays, an employee appears with a trolley and unloads the empty cases from the boot pushes the trolley in and literally two minutes later returns with the new full cases and loads them in. Amazing to watch and the same service was provided to the Lamborghini SUV driven by a very smart young lady as to the craftsman who rolled up in his old Ford white van. Yes I did see the Lambo lady give a tip but it is not the rule and not expected. Germans often say their country is the "Customer Service Desert" of the world but here in this shop it is alive and well.

Back home Angie couldn't wait and while I waited for the coffee machine to get into action, I heard the mower start up and she drove it out of the trailer and started on a mission. The skies had turned grey and the forecast was for imminent heavy thunderstorms with hail. This didn't stop her going over all the areas I had provisionally mowed with the big tractor.

As the first drops of rain appeared, I said I wasn't going to start mowing the one horse field that needed it and went back indoors. The light drizzle stopped after one minute and Angie took it upon herself to mow the field with the lawn tractor!

No holding her back, just hope the mower lasts until the autumn and the final leaves have been picked up.