Sixteen
On Monday morning as I drive to work I see more bricks slung on the heap of rubbish outside the house that had useless bricks before… I investigate at lunchtime and meet the lovely builders who say I can have as many as I like, and they even help me load the car. With three of us loading there are a lot of bricks in it. Probably rather too many… the car is parked on a slope and when I’ve said my goodbyes and removed the handbrake it simply doesn’t move…
Eventually the wheels start to go round and when I get home and unload the booty I find it’s a grand total of 67 bricks! The good news is that I now know that that’s limits, weightwise, for a little Smart… bless it. The boys have said that they’ll be taking a wall down in a few weeks and they’ll pile the bricks up for me where I can see them. Seems churlish to refuse…
On Tuesday they’ve done it sooner than expected and made a pile of bricks, so I load up on my way home – the pile is enormous so I can only take half of it… I go back for the remainder on Wednesday and swap a chocolate cake for the bricks, and the builders seem suitably happy. I think we now have more than enough bricks, but then they say there’s yet more wall to come down and would I like the bricks? Seems churlish to refuse…
I have a half day because Rob the Builder is coming to shift scalpings (rough stone pieces for under the concrete slab), and we’re going to be blocking the lane for a while, so I think I ought to be there – Darren the Digger brings 5 tons of scalpings on his tipper truck, and duly tips them in the road. I try to help Rob by shovelling barrowloads and running them down the metal tracks on the slope to the shed area, but he says it’s really quite dangerous and he’d rather I didn’t. I don’t need that much persuading, so I hoover out my poor little car instead – soon it looks like a car instead of a brick van, which is better.
Rob shifts all 5 tons of scalpings within an hour… amazing! He’s even raked it over the base area, and it now looks neat and tidy. Or at least it looks neat and tidy till the beech leaves start falling on it… He says he’ll be back Friday or Sunday to put up the shuttering, and then on Wednesday for the concrete to be poured – neither of the local concrete companies will deliver up our lane, so he’s going to have to come up with another plan… Buckets?
On Saturday we construct a flatpack greenhouse at mums in the morning, and then she helps us sweep leaves in the afternoon – we notice there’s a horrible lump in the new path edge, like the Tellytubbies hill, so we unturf it, adjust the clay underneath and then relay the turf. Or lumps of moss, as we call it. It’s 3rd November and when I go to the local garage for papers I am waylaid by a snotty lad with a kid’s pushchair saying ‘Penny for the Guy?’ I explain that I have no change and that I’ll see him when I’ve paid for the papers. As I turn to go into the shop I hear him yell ‘OI, KYLE, GET DOWN HERE I’VE GOT MONEY COMING’. Bless… When I go out I have 50p, 20p and 10p pieces… Because I’m mean and it’s a rubbish guy I give the original lad the 20p, and the one that’s just arrived (he’s the puffing one with the red face) the 10p. As I get in the car I can hear them comparing notes: ‘I go’ twenny pee wha’ you ge’?’ ‘10p ‘ow mean is tha’?’ Ungrateful little buggers.
On Sunday it’s the farmer’s market again, then we shoot off to the salvage yard to look at slabs. We had originally thought we needed 10 slabs (these are to sit in the gravel outside the shed) and then Guy looked at the slabs outside the pool shed and counted 20 in the same sort of area. We decide we’ll have 20. As we’re driving along we have a rethink. 20 will cost more than 10. 10 will be enough. We decide we will ask for 10 slabs and get them delivered. When we get there we decide we’ll choose our slabs and take half of them home in my car. If we’d planned this better we’d have gone in Guy’s car (bigger, more space) but we haven’t so we’re in my poor little Smart again… We rootle round the different pallets of slabs and eventually decide on our odd and occasionally misshapen collection… Half get loaded into the Smart (4 in the back, one in the front footwell for Guy to rest his feet on) and I’ll pick the rest up on Wednesday when I have a half day for the concrete… The chap at the salvage yard (It’s called Theodore & Son & Daughters, so we have to presume he’s Mr Theodore) tells us that they’ve been taking up the floor at the old Burberry factory in the valleys and do we need flooring? Canadian maple at £8 per square yard. He gives us a sample to take home and have a think about it. Looks a little grotty, but he says it’ll sand down nicely… we quite like the idea of having a recycled floor – and it’s local too. Well, ok, Canadian maple isn’t exactly local, but the factory was before the bigwigs at Burberry sacked everyone and moved toTaiwan…
We’re going to have a gentle afternoon – just fiddling with the first bit of the brick path. As Darren has done all the hard work with the digger it’ll be a doddle – just a bit of levelling and placing the bricks to get a good line before we cement them in place next weekend. However, we’re dying to see what the maple floor is like, so Guy sands the sample down...
...while I knock mortar off a few bricks.
The pile in the middle are clean, the ones on the far side need cleaning, and the ones nearest probably need cleaning but it was too dark when I unloaded them to see so they need checking. I find it quite therapeutic whacking bricks with a lump hammer… the maple is gorgeous, and we’re definitely having it for the floor – in the main room of the shed at least. We may still put cheapo planks in the storage area.
And then we start on the brick line. We know there’s a small stone slab buried under the grass, but we think it won’t be in the way. It isn’t really, but then we find one that is. Guy puts the persuader under one end and shoves. It isn’t a slab, it’s half a tennis court… it is HUGE. And it’s in the way. The only way to move it is to dig away about a square yard of turf and wiggle it out with the persuader.
Guy does all the hard work and it comes out – it is even MORE HUGE than we thought. We’ve never seen such an enormous piece of stone – bigger than anything at the salvage yard and probably worth about £40! We certainly want to use it, but we can’t move it – it’s just too heavy.
We try to get it into the wheelbarrow, but it just pushes the wheelbarrow out of the way… We get it upright and think maybe we can ‘wheel’ it across the grass to vaguely near where we want it – but it weighs a ton and is going to sink into the grass on every turn. I then remember we have a trolley in the shed, so Guy stays holding the slab upright (if we put it down we may never get it upright again) and I go to get the trolley. I don’t think it’s been used since I had the business, which explains why it’s under a Workmate, two deckchairs, four large sheets of MDF and two marquees. We manoeuvre the slab onto the trolley, and try to push. It doesn’t work – it just sinks into the grass. We think maybe it’s like one of those flat bed trolleys at B&Q which only work if you pull them, and we turn it round… we pull, it moves! And then, quite literally, the wheels come off. Or not actually off, but sort of flattened… useless trolley. We have to go back to rolling the slab on its edge and we leave a trail of dents across the grass to the shed area… We then spend half an hour repairing the crater left in the grass, and another hour trying to get the brick line straight, by which time it’s getting dark and we have to give up. Damned Fine Slab, though!
Achieved so far: Scalpings on the base, enough bricks collected, grass edge ready for bricking (sort of) and a huge slab removed from under the path.
Hours worked: Actual physical work? About 2 hours on Sunday shifting that slab, sanding and brick cleaning, 1 on Saturday removing Tellytubby hill, and various bits and bobs loading and unloading bricks and visiting the salvage yard. As well as all the usual gardeny stuff.
Plan for the week: Concrete slab on Wednesday! Except Rob the Builder didn’t turn up on either Friday or Sunday to put up the shuttering… Maybe a little phone call to remind him tomorrow? Yep, I think so…
Pressies: Mum bought us gin for assembling her greenhouse. Hooray!
Purchases: 10 slabs and a load of scalpings
Brick count: We had 180 at the end of last week. Then 67 on Monday, 60 on Tuesday and 54 on Wednesday… We now have 361. After laying out the first 17 bricks of the path today we now know we need just 120 for the path edge. Oops. Anna texted me on Sunday afternoon to say she’s seen a vast pile of bricks that have been dumped… Guy says perhaps not.
Wildlife update: Truly sad news. Colin (neighbour) told us early in the week that he heard horrible animal screaming noises from down in the wood one night, and thought one of the sheep was being attacked. He went to investigate the next day and found a badger set had been dug out – presumably local yobbos sending dogs down to kill for ‘sport’. We’ve not seen the badger since. We do have a badger visiting for food, but he’s more timid and has a longer tail – definitely not the original. It’s really horrible to think of what happened to him. And I am STILL trying to photograph squirrels – to the extent that we think we will have a home produced squirrel Christmas card. We have decorated the feeder with ivy and maple leaves from mum’s garden - two squirrels visited when I didn’t have the camera handy, then we spent the afternoon gardening and frightened them all off. Damn. The evenings are now too dark to photograph anything, so it’ll have to wait till Wednesday (half day) or next weekend. By which time the ivy will be dead and the maple leaves will have shrivelled. Hey ho.
Cakes: One night (can’t remember which) we made two tiers of a wedding cake (fruit), iced the sofa cake, made a chocolate cake for the builders and put a dry stone wall on one edge of the orienteering cake. Busy time! There was a fruit cake another night too – I put it in the oven at 9pm so it would be ready at 7.30 the next morning (cool oven, Aga!). Which would have worked fine if I had remembered to get it out before I reached my desk at work… I had to ring Guy and say ‘HELP THERE’S A FRUIT CAKE IN THE OVEN’ and he went round and rescued it… Need to invent a better system for not forgetting to get them out. Like a memory, perhaps?
Quote of the week: ‘We’ll just start the brick line – it won’t take long.’ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Will we ever learn?
Eventually the wheels start to go round and when I get home and unload the booty I find it’s a grand total of 67 bricks! The good news is that I now know that that’s limits, weightwise, for a little Smart… bless it. The boys have said that they’ll be taking a wall down in a few weeks and they’ll pile the bricks up for me where I can see them. Seems churlish to refuse…
On Tuesday they’ve done it sooner than expected and made a pile of bricks, so I load up on my way home – the pile is enormous so I can only take half of it… I go back for the remainder on Wednesday and swap a chocolate cake for the bricks, and the builders seem suitably happy. I think we now have more than enough bricks, but then they say there’s yet more wall to come down and would I like the bricks? Seems churlish to refuse…
I have a half day because Rob the Builder is coming to shift scalpings (rough stone pieces for under the concrete slab), and we’re going to be blocking the lane for a while, so I think I ought to be there – Darren the Digger brings 5 tons of scalpings on his tipper truck, and duly tips them in the road. I try to help Rob by shovelling barrowloads and running them down the metal tracks on the slope to the shed area, but he says it’s really quite dangerous and he’d rather I didn’t. I don’t need that much persuading, so I hoover out my poor little car instead – soon it looks like a car instead of a brick van, which is better.
Rob shifts all 5 tons of scalpings within an hour… amazing! He’s even raked it over the base area, and it now looks neat and tidy. Or at least it looks neat and tidy till the beech leaves start falling on it… He says he’ll be back Friday or Sunday to put up the shuttering, and then on Wednesday for the concrete to be poured – neither of the local concrete companies will deliver up our lane, so he’s going to have to come up with another plan… Buckets?
On Saturday we construct a flatpack greenhouse at mums in the morning, and then she helps us sweep leaves in the afternoon – we notice there’s a horrible lump in the new path edge, like the Tellytubbies hill, so we unturf it, adjust the clay underneath and then relay the turf. Or lumps of moss, as we call it. It’s 3rd November and when I go to the local garage for papers I am waylaid by a snotty lad with a kid’s pushchair saying ‘Penny for the Guy?’ I explain that I have no change and that I’ll see him when I’ve paid for the papers. As I turn to go into the shop I hear him yell ‘OI, KYLE, GET DOWN HERE I’VE GOT MONEY COMING’. Bless… When I go out I have 50p, 20p and 10p pieces… Because I’m mean and it’s a rubbish guy I give the original lad the 20p, and the one that’s just arrived (he’s the puffing one with the red face) the 10p. As I get in the car I can hear them comparing notes: ‘I go’ twenny pee wha’ you ge’?’ ‘10p ‘ow mean is tha’?’ Ungrateful little buggers.
On Sunday it’s the farmer’s market again, then we shoot off to the salvage yard to look at slabs. We had originally thought we needed 10 slabs (these are to sit in the gravel outside the shed) and then Guy looked at the slabs outside the pool shed and counted 20 in the same sort of area. We decide we’ll have 20. As we’re driving along we have a rethink. 20 will cost more than 10. 10 will be enough. We decide we will ask for 10 slabs and get them delivered. When we get there we decide we’ll choose our slabs and take half of them home in my car. If we’d planned this better we’d have gone in Guy’s car (bigger, more space) but we haven’t so we’re in my poor little Smart again… We rootle round the different pallets of slabs and eventually decide on our odd and occasionally misshapen collection… Half get loaded into the Smart (4 in the back, one in the front footwell for Guy to rest his feet on) and I’ll pick the rest up on Wednesday when I have a half day for the concrete… The chap at the salvage yard (It’s called Theodore & Son & Daughters, so we have to presume he’s Mr Theodore) tells us that they’ve been taking up the floor at the old Burberry factory in the valleys and do we need flooring? Canadian maple at £8 per square yard. He gives us a sample to take home and have a think about it. Looks a little grotty, but he says it’ll sand down nicely… we quite like the idea of having a recycled floor – and it’s local too. Well, ok, Canadian maple isn’t exactly local, but the factory was before the bigwigs at Burberry sacked everyone and moved toTaiwan…
We’re going to have a gentle afternoon – just fiddling with the first bit of the brick path. As Darren has done all the hard work with the digger it’ll be a doddle – just a bit of levelling and placing the bricks to get a good line before we cement them in place next weekend. However, we’re dying to see what the maple floor is like, so Guy sands the sample down...
...while I knock mortar off a few bricks.
The pile in the middle are clean, the ones on the far side need cleaning, and the ones nearest probably need cleaning but it was too dark when I unloaded them to see so they need checking. I find it quite therapeutic whacking bricks with a lump hammer… the maple is gorgeous, and we’re definitely having it for the floor – in the main room of the shed at least. We may still put cheapo planks in the storage area.
And then we start on the brick line. We know there’s a small stone slab buried under the grass, but we think it won’t be in the way. It isn’t really, but then we find one that is. Guy puts the persuader under one end and shoves. It isn’t a slab, it’s half a tennis court… it is HUGE. And it’s in the way. The only way to move it is to dig away about a square yard of turf and wiggle it out with the persuader.
Guy does all the hard work and it comes out – it is even MORE HUGE than we thought. We’ve never seen such an enormous piece of stone – bigger than anything at the salvage yard and probably worth about £40! We certainly want to use it, but we can’t move it – it’s just too heavy.
We try to get it into the wheelbarrow, but it just pushes the wheelbarrow out of the way… We get it upright and think maybe we can ‘wheel’ it across the grass to vaguely near where we want it – but it weighs a ton and is going to sink into the grass on every turn. I then remember we have a trolley in the shed, so Guy stays holding the slab upright (if we put it down we may never get it upright again) and I go to get the trolley. I don’t think it’s been used since I had the business, which explains why it’s under a Workmate, two deckchairs, four large sheets of MDF and two marquees. We manoeuvre the slab onto the trolley, and try to push. It doesn’t work – it just sinks into the grass. We think maybe it’s like one of those flat bed trolleys at B&Q which only work if you pull them, and we turn it round… we pull, it moves! And then, quite literally, the wheels come off. Or not actually off, but sort of flattened… useless trolley. We have to go back to rolling the slab on its edge and we leave a trail of dents across the grass to the shed area… We then spend half an hour repairing the crater left in the grass, and another hour trying to get the brick line straight, by which time it’s getting dark and we have to give up. Damned Fine Slab, though!
Achieved so far: Scalpings on the base, enough bricks collected, grass edge ready for bricking (sort of) and a huge slab removed from under the path.
Hours worked: Actual physical work? About 2 hours on Sunday shifting that slab, sanding and brick cleaning, 1 on Saturday removing Tellytubby hill, and various bits and bobs loading and unloading bricks and visiting the salvage yard. As well as all the usual gardeny stuff.
Plan for the week: Concrete slab on Wednesday! Except Rob the Builder didn’t turn up on either Friday or Sunday to put up the shuttering… Maybe a little phone call to remind him tomorrow? Yep, I think so…
Pressies: Mum bought us gin for assembling her greenhouse. Hooray!
Purchases: 10 slabs and a load of scalpings
Brick count: We had 180 at the end of last week. Then 67 on Monday, 60 on Tuesday and 54 on Wednesday… We now have 361. After laying out the first 17 bricks of the path today we now know we need just 120 for the path edge. Oops. Anna texted me on Sunday afternoon to say she’s seen a vast pile of bricks that have been dumped… Guy says perhaps not.
Wildlife update: Truly sad news. Colin (neighbour) told us early in the week that he heard horrible animal screaming noises from down in the wood one night, and thought one of the sheep was being attacked. He went to investigate the next day and found a badger set had been dug out – presumably local yobbos sending dogs down to kill for ‘sport’. We’ve not seen the badger since. We do have a badger visiting for food, but he’s more timid and has a longer tail – definitely not the original. It’s really horrible to think of what happened to him. And I am STILL trying to photograph squirrels – to the extent that we think we will have a home produced squirrel Christmas card. We have decorated the feeder with ivy and maple leaves from mum’s garden - two squirrels visited when I didn’t have the camera handy, then we spent the afternoon gardening and frightened them all off. Damn. The evenings are now too dark to photograph anything, so it’ll have to wait till Wednesday (half day) or next weekend. By which time the ivy will be dead and the maple leaves will have shrivelled. Hey ho.
Cakes: One night (can’t remember which) we made two tiers of a wedding cake (fruit), iced the sofa cake, made a chocolate cake for the builders and put a dry stone wall on one edge of the orienteering cake. Busy time! There was a fruit cake another night too – I put it in the oven at 9pm so it would be ready at 7.30 the next morning (cool oven, Aga!). Which would have worked fine if I had remembered to get it out before I reached my desk at work… I had to ring Guy and say ‘HELP THERE’S A FRUIT CAKE IN THE OVEN’ and he went round and rescued it… Need to invent a better system for not forgetting to get them out. Like a memory, perhaps?
Quote of the week: ‘We’ll just start the brick line – it won’t take long.’ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Will we ever learn?
Comments
Post a Comment