Sarah and Guy Build A Shed

After the minor excitement (ok, serious stress) in the middle of the week (if you haven’t checked in since last Sunday, go back a bit… you’ll see what I mean!) we are now Calm And Rational people.  We are patient, and we will wait for the week until Mr Planner has done his stuff.  Till 4.15 Thursday.  See, still imprinted on my brain…  We don’t do a great deal, as we still don’t want to jump the gun and start Doing Stuff in case it all goes pear-shaped.  So Saturday becomes a normal Saturday – we watch squirrels, go shopping, watch squirrels, see mum for coffee, watch squirrels, have lunch (watching squirrels), do housework, watch squirrels, clean old mower (that will be Important later), watch squirrels, mow grass and have a cup of tea (watching squirrels).  The squirrels are very watchable.  No, really!  We don’t actually recognise any of them yet – apart from the one with a square end to his tail who we’ve called Squaretail.  Yes, we’re ...

Thursday:  I hold off phoning the planner for AGES.  Until 9.20.  I get his answerphone saying ‘there’s no-one here to take your call please leave a message…’ Yeah, right.  I am patient.  I wait till 9.40.  Same message.  At 10.10 I phone the main Council switchboard.  There is no answer.  Have they all, perhaps, been abducted by aliens?  And, if so, will the lack of planning consent matter if we just go ahead and put up our shed? At 11.10 (serious restraint being shown, methinks) I find the Planning Department number on the website and try that.  It gets answered.  Hooray – progress!  I ask if Mr Planner is in and the girl says ‘I dunno, I’m jus’ back off me holidays and I dunno woss goin’ on can you try again later?’  Thank you so much most helpful. At 12.05 I try the direct line again and get an answer – can I speak to Mr Planner?  No, he’s not here.  Can you help me?  No, I just picked up the ph...

Wednesday:  An additional entry that definitely comes under the heading of 'you couldn't make it up...' Midway through the day there's bad news – we hear that the Royal Mail post are planning two 48 hour strikes – one set for 5th/6th October, the other for 8th/9th October which, with the Sunday inbetween, means FIVE days without post at the end of next week – just when we’re expecting to hear about planning.  BUGGER.  Karen in my office reckons they’re reading BrideShedRevisited and planning their action to cause maximum disruption… Still, on the bright side, our 21 days of having the second ‘Notice of Planning’ are finally, finally up.  It has been quite the longest 21 days we’ve ever known… it means when I get home from work I can take down the notices and just wait for the post.  I get in to find a letter from the Council on the mat.  Planning?  Already?  WOO HOO!  Nope.  It’s a letter saying ‘it has not been possible to determine...

It’s SO frustrating.  We’re now 18 days into our 21 and just NOTHING is happening.  We’re thinking about planning every waking moment, but can do nothing.  We can’t order wood for the shuttering, start clearing the site, order the shed, nothing.  Absolutely zippo.  Except somebody in the village helpfully tells me that the reason I’m not getting planning is because my name is all over this WAG stuff and the planners don’t like me.  This is Utter Rot because we first wrote to planning on 16th April (16TH APRIL – that’s MONTHS ago) and the WAG stuff started up in late June.  However, even though it is Utter Rot it still winds me up…  What if we don’t get planning? By Thursday night the lack of anything shed related is beginning to get to us, and we start with our plans for that rope…  I clear out an overgrown lavender from a pot and find a Nice Bit Of Wood in the shed.  The current shed, also known as a garage because it used to be a hor...

Given the total lack of progress on all things planning, the week starts off with us thinking ‘ok, we’ll put the shed to the back of our minds and do Other Stuff’. This lasts till approximately 10.30 on Monday morning when I realise there’s a hitch with our plan because of the slope we haven’t yet got to grips with. We agree to leave it till Tuesday because we Have Other Things To Do. In the village where I (eventually we) live, there used to be a factory. It made paint. Ghastly blue paint, if the state of my house when I moved in was anything to go by… must have been a job lot. Anyway, the factory has closed and there is going to be a new housing estate. Waterloo currently has 82 houses. There are plans for 545 new houses. Eek. And the worst thing is that the ONLY access road is going to come through our little lane, which is only single track in places. So we’re trying to get it moved. The access road, not the estate – we’re stuffed on that one. A few of us have formed the Waterloo A...

On Monday I drive home from work thinking ‘ok, so the planner was back at work today – maybe, just maybe, he’s managed to pin the new planning permission request to the fence today’.  Exceedingly unreasonable, I know, but a girl can HOPE.  Fat chance… nothing on the fence, oak tree or posts…  hmph. On Tuesday there is still nothing from the planners, and on Wednesday I decide that it is all going to happen so I may as well start talking concrete… we’re going to need a base and it’s going to need concrete.  I ring up a concrete company (seriously – you just search for ‘concrete’ in Yellow Pages!) and speak shed bases and cubic metres.  Which is tricky as I still operate in feet… However, the nice patient lady at the end of the phone has clearly met people who Do Not Move With The Times and obviously has a handy converter gizmo.  We guess at the depth between us and call it just over 3 cubic metres.  £276.  TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX QUID.  ...

We decide to teach Blunkett something useful for when we have a shed.  If we teach her to ‘take it to Master’ then Guy need never come in the house at all – Blunkett can take him books, CDs, messages, wine, whatever he needs.  Probably not food because she’s a Labrador and the chances of her carrying food and not eating are, frankly, nil.  So we start.  Guy throws a ball.  She ignores it.  I go fetch it.  I throw it back to Guy and he throws it again.  Blunkett ignores it.  I go fetch it.  Eventually she decides to humour us and takes the ball from me while I say ‘MASTER’ in a Barbara Woodhouse manner, and she takes it to Guy.  Or at least she heads in his general direction then keels over to have her tummy tickled without giving up the ball.  Needs a little work yet… We have an evening making cakes too.  We make cakes for friends and friends of friends.  We find we have a lot of friends…  Wednesday’s tally...