Twenty Two
It’s a completely unsheddy week, so we’re both looking forward to Guy’s gig on Thursday night and a day off work on Friday – nothing much planned, except a lazy morning, bit of shopping, catch up on some telly, take it easy.
As I’m leaving work on Thursday I get a phone call from Keith the Shed to say our shed is ready and how about Wednesday? What, NEXT Wednesday? Yes, yes, yes and YES! I decide not to phone Guy to tell him as I want to see his reaction… when he picks me up for the gig I say casually ‘Keith phoned, he’s coming down with the shed next Wednesday…’ and then there’s a lot of ‘what, NEXT Wednesday?’ and ‘WOO HOO’ for a while. To say we are excited is a bit of an understatement. WOO HOO! And then we start planning madly… the forecast is horrendous (again) for the weekend, so we think we ought to finish the drainage on Friday. Our nice lazy ‘recovering after the gig’ Friday… We spend the entire journey into Cardiff discussing drains and gravel and clearing up and paths and walls….
The gig is fantastic – the band are brilliant (as usual) and everyone has a great time – definitely plans to do another one some time…. It’s a late night and by the time we get to bed it’s about 1.30.
At 8 I’m awake thinking drains and sheds… The forecast is for ‘showers’ and the wind is so brisk we can see the showers coming… It’s sunny so we get up to make an early start, thinking we’ll put our feet up in the afternoon… by the time we’re downstairs it’s pouring again, so we have breakfast and then it’s sunny.
We start digging. Or, rather, Guy starts digging and I stand around taking photographs. I think this is A Good Arrangement. The drain has to follow the wall around, cross the path and then cross the lawn to a piece of rougher grass where we don’t mind puddles.
As Guy digs, I unturf a section across the lawn.
Guy gets as far as the path edge and hits gravel. That’ll be the gravel of the land drain that runs at right angles to where we’re going and down into the wood. So our drain can, er, drain into that drain? Yep! Hooray! Less digging! No need to take the turf up! So I put it all back in again.
We’ve got this far surprisingly quickly. Now all we need to do is get the soil pipe, pop it in the ditch, fill it with gravel, put the membranes back over and add more gravel. Easy peasy. We go to the local builders’ yard for soil pipe. They don’t have any – it’s on order and due in today, but not yet. We try the local plumbing supplies depot, two DIY stores and another builders’ merchants. Zippo. We ring the first one back to see if their delivery has turned up. It hasn’t. They suggest another yard in Cardiff (practically next to my office) and it has two reels. That’s two 25m reels of pipe. We only want 7m! Nobody is prepared to cut it, so we have to get 25m.
We go home and fiddle with the damp proof course – the plastic is supposed to be ‘glued into’ the concrete, but it isn’t, and where it’s loose it’s filling with water, leaves, stones, mud and general crap. We sponge out all the wet bits and then attempt to glue the plastic to the concrete with guttering sealant. Which says on the tube, helpfully, ‘make sure all surfaces are dry, clean and free from grease’. Yeah, right. We do it anyway. We weight it all the way round with yet more bricks – just to hold it in place till the shed is on top of it.
By this time it’s 12 o’clock and threatening to rain, so we stop for an early lunch. Blunkett has been with mum since Thursday teatime before the gig, and we’ve said we’ll pick her up ‘lunchtime on Friday’. So after our early lunch we phone mum who says we can go and get her, and off we trot. Now, I don’t know which bit of ‘we’ll pick her up about lunchtime’ translated as ‘we’ll come for lunch’ but mum has lunch for me. She’s roasted a chicken and promptly puts some on a plate in front of me. No problem – I can always eat two lunches. Guy is busy laughing. Until a baked potato gets put in front of him and he has two lunches too. Excellent idea! We leave, somewhat stuffed, with Blunkett and agree what we actually want to do is fall asleep… instead of which Guy walks back to his house to get… I can’t remember, but doubtless something we needed… and I go off to the builders’ yard near my office to get the pipe. I toy with the idea of popping in to show people how relaxed and stylish I can be on my day off, but as I have mud pretty much everywhere and I haven’t washed my hair, I give it a miss.
Do you know how much 25m of soil pipe is? It’s a lot. It’s a car full… luckily I thought it might be pushing my luck in my little car, so I’ve got Guy’s, but it still won’t fit. The chap at the shop suggests unfurling the coil, so we saw off the bindings, and then try to push the pipe in bit by bit….I remember a bit from one of the James Herriott vet books where some cow’s intestines have escaped and he tries to put them back in – as you shove one bit, another bit pops out. It’s exactly like that! Eventually it all goes in and we get the boot shut, but I certainly can’t see a thing out of the back of the car and the sky is looking ominously black…
By the time I get home the rain is monsoon-like. I decide the only thing to do is… carry on. I drag one end of the pipe out of the car and it snakes and coils around behind me as I make my way to the drain. I put it in the far end of the drain and uncoil it along the ditch. It coils up again. I try again. It coils up again. This time I drag it down to the lawn and, by doing some mad dance, manage to uncoil the whole damned thing. Hah! I drag the end back into the ditch and saw off the other end. Now it’s shorter it can coil back up again… AAAARRRGGGHHHH. I stand on one end and shovel gravel at it until it gives up the fight, then repeat with the other end. That shows it! At this point Guy returns from his house, also drowned. My coat zip has broken, the rain is still torrential, and we are both soaked. Guy starts bringing more gravel down the slippery walkway, and we shovel… we fill the ditch, then put new membrane down, and keep shovelling. The rain turns to hail and we temporarily hide in the utility room. When we venture outside again we have to empty the wheelbarrows of hailstones. Eventually we’re done. And done in…
And that’s about it. We can’t do anything more to the path until the weather is better (Vincent’s brilliant wall is going to be extended round to the post you can see), and we can’t shovel any more gravel until the wall is finished.
Achieved: We have a slab ready, and it won’t flood. We think.
Hours worked: Zippo till Thursday night, then LOTS!
Purchases: Two pansies to make the pool cabin look pretty so that it looks its best for Keith’s return visit. Grand sum of £1.10.
Pressies: The soil pipe for the land drain was a Christmas present from my mum. We meant to put a bit of tinsel on it before burying it, but given the torrential rain, we forgot. So we sang Jingle Bells as we dumped gravel on it instead. And we got wine for the tent cake, wine for the wedding cake, and champagne from Sam and Gavin for letting them use Guy’s house. Excellent!
Wildlife update: Those squirrels are NOT fat. They simply have thick coats.
Plan: Get a shed on Wednesday! WOO HOO!
The ‘oh bugger’ moment of the week: Tough call this week… was it when I found I hadn’t needed to take the turf up? Or when my zip went in the monsoon?
As I’m leaving work on Thursday I get a phone call from Keith the Shed to say our shed is ready and how about Wednesday? What, NEXT Wednesday? Yes, yes, yes and YES! I decide not to phone Guy to tell him as I want to see his reaction… when he picks me up for the gig I say casually ‘Keith phoned, he’s coming down with the shed next Wednesday…’ and then there’s a lot of ‘what, NEXT Wednesday?’ and ‘WOO HOO’ for a while. To say we are excited is a bit of an understatement. WOO HOO! And then we start planning madly… the forecast is horrendous (again) for the weekend, so we think we ought to finish the drainage on Friday. Our nice lazy ‘recovering after the gig’ Friday… We spend the entire journey into Cardiff discussing drains and gravel and clearing up and paths and walls….
The gig is fantastic – the band are brilliant (as usual) and everyone has a great time – definitely plans to do another one some time…. It’s a late night and by the time we get to bed it’s about 1.30.
At 8 I’m awake thinking drains and sheds… The forecast is for ‘showers’ and the wind is so brisk we can see the showers coming… It’s sunny so we get up to make an early start, thinking we’ll put our feet up in the afternoon… by the time we’re downstairs it’s pouring again, so we have breakfast and then it’s sunny.
We start digging. Or, rather, Guy starts digging and I stand around taking photographs. I think this is A Good Arrangement. The drain has to follow the wall around, cross the path and then cross the lawn to a piece of rougher grass where we don’t mind puddles.
As Guy digs, I unturf a section across the lawn.
Guy gets as far as the path edge and hits gravel. That’ll be the gravel of the land drain that runs at right angles to where we’re going and down into the wood. So our drain can, er, drain into that drain? Yep! Hooray! Less digging! No need to take the turf up! So I put it all back in again.
We’ve got this far surprisingly quickly. Now all we need to do is get the soil pipe, pop it in the ditch, fill it with gravel, put the membranes back over and add more gravel. Easy peasy. We go to the local builders’ yard for soil pipe. They don’t have any – it’s on order and due in today, but not yet. We try the local plumbing supplies depot, two DIY stores and another builders’ merchants. Zippo. We ring the first one back to see if their delivery has turned up. It hasn’t. They suggest another yard in Cardiff (practically next to my office) and it has two reels. That’s two 25m reels of pipe. We only want 7m! Nobody is prepared to cut it, so we have to get 25m.
We go home and fiddle with the damp proof course – the plastic is supposed to be ‘glued into’ the concrete, but it isn’t, and where it’s loose it’s filling with water, leaves, stones, mud and general crap. We sponge out all the wet bits and then attempt to glue the plastic to the concrete with guttering sealant. Which says on the tube, helpfully, ‘make sure all surfaces are dry, clean and free from grease’. Yeah, right. We do it anyway. We weight it all the way round with yet more bricks – just to hold it in place till the shed is on top of it.
By this time it’s 12 o’clock and threatening to rain, so we stop for an early lunch. Blunkett has been with mum since Thursday teatime before the gig, and we’ve said we’ll pick her up ‘lunchtime on Friday’. So after our early lunch we phone mum who says we can go and get her, and off we trot. Now, I don’t know which bit of ‘we’ll pick her up about lunchtime’ translated as ‘we’ll come for lunch’ but mum has lunch for me. She’s roasted a chicken and promptly puts some on a plate in front of me. No problem – I can always eat two lunches. Guy is busy laughing. Until a baked potato gets put in front of him and he has two lunches too. Excellent idea! We leave, somewhat stuffed, with Blunkett and agree what we actually want to do is fall asleep… instead of which Guy walks back to his house to get… I can’t remember, but doubtless something we needed… and I go off to the builders’ yard near my office to get the pipe. I toy with the idea of popping in to show people how relaxed and stylish I can be on my day off, but as I have mud pretty much everywhere and I haven’t washed my hair, I give it a miss.
Do you know how much 25m of soil pipe is? It’s a lot. It’s a car full… luckily I thought it might be pushing my luck in my little car, so I’ve got Guy’s, but it still won’t fit. The chap at the shop suggests unfurling the coil, so we saw off the bindings, and then try to push the pipe in bit by bit….I remember a bit from one of the James Herriott vet books where some cow’s intestines have escaped and he tries to put them back in – as you shove one bit, another bit pops out. It’s exactly like that! Eventually it all goes in and we get the boot shut, but I certainly can’t see a thing out of the back of the car and the sky is looking ominously black…
By the time I get home the rain is monsoon-like. I decide the only thing to do is… carry on. I drag one end of the pipe out of the car and it snakes and coils around behind me as I make my way to the drain. I put it in the far end of the drain and uncoil it along the ditch. It coils up again. I try again. It coils up again. This time I drag it down to the lawn and, by doing some mad dance, manage to uncoil the whole damned thing. Hah! I drag the end back into the ditch and saw off the other end. Now it’s shorter it can coil back up again… AAAARRRGGGHHHH. I stand on one end and shovel gravel at it until it gives up the fight, then repeat with the other end. That shows it! At this point Guy returns from his house, also drowned. My coat zip has broken, the rain is still torrential, and we are both soaked. Guy starts bringing more gravel down the slippery walkway, and we shovel… we fill the ditch, then put new membrane down, and keep shovelling. The rain turns to hail and we temporarily hide in the utility room. When we venture outside again we have to empty the wheelbarrows of hailstones. Eventually we’re done. And done in…
And that’s about it. We can’t do anything more to the path until the weather is better (Vincent’s brilliant wall is going to be extended round to the post you can see), and we can’t shovel any more gravel until the wall is finished.
Achieved: We have a slab ready, and it won’t flood. We think.
Hours worked: Zippo till Thursday night, then LOTS!
Purchases: Two pansies to make the pool cabin look pretty so that it looks its best for Keith’s return visit. Grand sum of £1.10.
Pressies: The soil pipe for the land drain was a Christmas present from my mum. We meant to put a bit of tinsel on it before burying it, but given the torrential rain, we forgot. So we sang Jingle Bells as we dumped gravel on it instead. And we got wine for the tent cake, wine for the wedding cake, and champagne from Sam and Gavin for letting them use Guy’s house. Excellent!
Wildlife update: Those squirrels are NOT fat. They simply have thick coats.
Plan: Get a shed on Wednesday! WOO HOO!
The ‘oh bugger’ moment of the week: Tough call this week… was it when I found I hadn’t needed to take the turf up? Or when my zip went in the monsoon?
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