My son had it from Twitter that the spring of 1982 was also wet and late following the heavy snowfall of that winter.

“Do you remember it, Dad?” he asked.

Remember it? I can’t remember what I did two days ago. But I knew where I could find out. I’d ascend into the dark and dusty archive department in the castle and find the 1982 diary.

Find it I did, and what a complete chronological history of 1982 it was – it should be on permanent display in Trinity College library alongside the Book of Kells. Reclining in the lovely leather Himolla armchair (which I bought at the Ploughing Championships last year), I settled down for a nostalgic read.

Fake news. That’s what it was on Twitter; the spring of 1982 was a terrific dry and early one, so much so I had recorded that March dust was worth a pound an ounce.

You have to remember that these notes were written by an exuberant and enthusiastic young man full of the joys of spring and as yet unsullied by the ways of the world.

And that exuberance was greatly helped by the fact that they were indeed buoyant days. Dried wheat was selling (in today’s currency) at €139/t, which was also the same price as a tonne of nitrogen.

That was the good news. The less good was that the wheat had been dried with a new Colman Morridge gas-fired mobile dryer which was unreliable and absolutely useless. It was allergic to wet grain and built in the US to dry wet wheat at a maximum moisture of 22%.

The top price that year, for an 830kg Simmental bullock, was €1,269, which was nice, but even better was the fact that it had only cost €398 a year earlier.

In those days, my father used to buy a lot of cattle in Ballinasloe Mart and the two of us would drive down there every Wednesday in the autumn.

We’d stop in Hayden’s Hotel on the way home and after a 16oz T-bone steak and the full works, Dad would get sleepy at the wheel and after a few near misses with the hedgerows he’d say: “Here, laddie, I think you may drive this car.”

In the autumn of 1982 we bought a new, or at least it was supposed to be, JCB 520 Loadall from the long defunct Blackwood Hodge, which had the franchise back then. It cost €18,400 with a couple of trade-ins (the full price was €31,700).

It wasn’t a telescopic, as none of them were, and, between poor forward reach and awful visibility, it was a horrible machine to drive.

I had my doubts that the machine was actually new and was itching for an opportunity to get rid of it. But no, they told us it was brand spanking new and that was that.

A few days later, we were poking around the engine bay and found a potato which had been sprayed JCB yellow, proof indeed that the machine had been resprayed and wasn’t new. I was delighted with this discovery and we promptly sent the machine back and got a full refund.

We then bought a Volvo 4200 loading shovel new for €33,000, the best loader we ever had. The equivalent machine today would be four times that price, while the price of grain is the same.

Anyhow back to the yellow spud. I know you probably think it was a set up and I planted it under the engine. Certainly not – I couldn’t find the right shade of yellow.

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