Sarah and Guy Build A Shed

At the start of the week I’m excited as Alison at Work’s building is starting, which means that there will be BRICKS available.  But she’s not in work, and I can hardly go round and bang on her door… can I?  I restrain myself. When she arrives in the office on Tuesday she says that she’s got Really Good News and that her builders have decided that, rather than knock the wall out first, they’ll build the new outer wall, put in the steels and get the new roof on first.  My, that is Really Good News.  That means the bricks from the wall to be knocked out won’t be, well, knocked out for at least another month.  How inconsiderate is that?  Never mind that her house would have been open to burglars and the elements just as we head into a cold snap…  On the plus side, Keith phones to say that he is nearly well and he has a quote for us.  Less than we expected!  Hooray!  And he hopes to get the shed to us before Christmas but he’s really reall...

The week starts well, when one of the girls at work emails me to say do I know the local GP practice is being demolished (it was a lovely new building that burnt to a crisp last year when somebody chucked a cigarette butt into a waste paper bin, and it has been roofless since) and there is a BIG pile of bricks… No more incentive is needed and off I whizz…  Yes, lots of bricks, but sadly a completely hideous colour – now, I know we want free bricks and it seems churlish to refuse freebies on the basis of ‘the colour’s not quite what we’re after’ but these are, frankly, purple.  Maybe they’ll build a prettier building next time.  However, the good news is that Guy has found a supply of discarded bricks near his office when walking Blunkett at lunchtime. Things look up on Tuesday as Guy phones me when I’m on my way home and says he’s in a field looking at a pile of bricks.  I make a detour and join him and, sure enough, he’s in a field looking at a pile of bricks....

Friday morning, and I phone Rob the Builder to tell him we would like him to do our base.  I tell him we have more confidence in him than the other bloke wot quoted and he sounds really chuffed, which immediately makes me worry that he doesn’t usually win jobs he quotes on… I’m sure I’m worrying about nothing.  Well, fairly sure. In my lunchtime I go to the house being refurbished on my route to work so that I can acquire bricks.  There are loads of them discarded in the front garden, and I know they’ll be putting them in a skip, so I am hopeful of being allowed to pinch a few…being lunchtime, the builders are there.  Good start!  As they’re not actually near the front, I have a peek at the bricks, of which there are plenty… Oh no!  WRONG KIND OF BRICKS!  They’re bigger, open textured and plain faced, which means (I think) that they’re internal bricks – whatever, they’re the Wrong Kind of Brick.  Bummer.  I head back to work slightly defl...

I head back down for the bricks in my lunchtime…  They’re still there (hooray) and I have my work gloves all ready in the car, together with a kitchen apron which I figure will help protect my office gear better than nothing.  I park in an incredibly small space (I love my Smart) right up against the skip, so the bricks are practically in the boot already.  Because it still feels like theft even though the bricks have been dumped in a skip, I decide to bang on the door of the house nearest and ask if I can raid their rubbish.  No response.  I try the house next door.  No response.  Then a girl (ok, she’s probably my age, I’m being generous) walks down the street to the house where I’m standing, chatting on her mobile phone.  I wait politely.  She gets out her keys, opens the front door and puts her bag inside.  She picks up the post and tucks it under one arm, then picks up her bag and steps indoors.  I smile in anticipation.  ...

This is SO much more fun now that we know we can get started…WOO HOO!  On Friday afternoon we (ok, I) decide that we should move the pile of stone.  Or stones.  These are proper lumps of Welsh stone, worth keeping, so they need moving…  The only place to put them is near the beech tree where they won’t be in the way, and there are twice as many as we thought as half of them are buried in the soil.  We even sort them into ‘lumpy stones’ and ‘flat stones’ (technical terms, obviously) in case we need them for something.  We take the one remaining ‘in the way’ branch off a tree and pull up any seedlings where the shed will be.  I speak to the concrete people again who now refuse point blank to come and see the access.  They evidently don’t think one measly load of concrete is worth the effort… At the weekend we’re off to stay with Sarah and Vincent, where we talk sheds, bases, sheds, bricks, sheds, gravel and Fiat 500s (that was Sarah’s bit).  ...

We’re on holiday!  We haven’t had a summer holiday because we thought we’d be taking time off to put in a shed, then Guy’s office got busy and said he couldn’t have time off in September, so as it’s 1st October, we’re off!  We considered a quick trip to Florence, but dismissed it as too pricey.  Then we had A Brilliant Idea.  There’s some dispute as to whose idea it was, but as it was a Seriously Brilliant Idea, I’ll claim it…  Guy has an old Flymo – not just an OLD Flymo, but an ORIGINAL old Flymo – one of the blue ones they made before housewives decided that orange would be prettier.  We also have a book called ‘Bollocks to Alton Towers’ which is full of weird and wonderful British attractions to visit that don’t involve queues and car parks and overpriced grotty sandwiches.  And it has details of  The British Lawnmower Museum  in Southport.  We have emailed them and said ‘we’ve got an old blue Flymo, would you like it, we’ll ...