After another hard day in the garden, I struggle up the staircase into the study to find Alex at the computer. "What are you looking for?" I ask.
"Hardcore" he calls.
Building is that surreal world in which such a response is met with a congratulatory nod and suggestion that he "looks for something cheap", rather than the resounding slap and flounce which it would illicit in any other context.
Alex and I have begun the bricklaying. We have nailed this process down to a honed and efficient model of productivity. I will outline this here:
Alex mixes the mortar. This consists of creating billowing clouds of cement and sand which sail over the fence and instantaneously coat all neighbours' washing within a .5 mile radius. This is best done on a day when they are washing white clothes. Any mixture left after this process is poured into a bucket and mixed with a drill. However, it would appear that Alex has discovered a more effective way of mixing which entails the bucket staying put and him twirling round and round it making buzzing noises. The ensuing mixture can have a range of textures ranging from water to marble via superglue. I did suggest, tentatively, a week ago that there might be a set formula for getting it right. However, this was shunned and I was exiled from the garden covered in dust.
My role in all this is to then lay the bricks. I happily volunteered for this,scoffing "How hard can it be to stick bricks together?....I know my lego!" This was before I was informed that a spirit level and several tonnes of patience would also be required. In actual fact, each brick must be painstakingly levelled, length, breadth, height with the brick next to it. When working with marble mixture, this can be a quick and pain-free process. Bob the Builder eat your heart out. However, when presented with superglue or water, the course of events goes thus: Set brick. Brick appears level. Make tiny adjustment. Brick upends. Jade flounces off to the bottom of the garden and accidentally kicks entire wall.
Consequently our progress has been slow. The air is filled with expletives and dust and many scuffed shins as I fall A over T over the wall. After 2 weeks of such proceedings we have now completed the layers of brick below the damp-course and the project is beginning to look more like an extension than a crisis. I leave you now to resume my duties. Mocking Alex as he whirls like a dervish and promptly falls into a bucket.
Monday, 19 August 2013
Thursday, 1 August 2013
Building Rome in a Day
We have just returned from a wonderful weeks respite aboard Thomson Majesty on a non-stop tour of Corfu, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Sorrento, Malta, Gozo and Pompeii. It was hot! Whilst Alex took architectural inspiration from The Colisseum, I sweated, melted and panted my way around one of the most impressive cities on Earth. Nevertheless, the week was a welcome break from the horrors of trench warfare in muddy Nuneaton.
We returned refreshed, inspired and peeling, ready to tackle the first course of bricks with energy and zest. However, it soon appeared that whilst we had been wilting in 38 degree Italian heat, England had sagged under several inches of torrential rainfall. This had returned our 3/4 filled trenches to an aqueous state and enthusiasm gave way to 'bugger it- let's just have a swimming pool' mentality. Grand aspirations for Warwickshire's first ampitheatre and Patheon dimmed, and the possibilities for Nuneaton's own Trevi Fountain seemed more likely.
From then on, we have been playing the waiting game. This is punctuated by an occasional frenzied dash into the garden to drop bricks into the water whenever there is a gap in the rain, a modern variation of the three coins in the fountain phenomenon. Meanwhile, my new chimnea smokes forbodingly at the bottom of the garden, heralding a new industrial age when Pimms under a parasol seems a far more tempting way of spending a summer evening than syphoning muddy trenchwater through a straw.
I leave you now to dash onto the driveway and lie prostrate in our aged trailer, as Alex attempts to measure it's length and breadth and work out whether we can transport Roman arches from Hinckley in it. Are we the only couple in England who are attempting a building project without actually owning a tape measure? I struggle to sit up in the trailer to answer my neighbour's query. Carpe Diem! I cry. (As I spot a fish swimming in our trenches)
We returned refreshed, inspired and peeling, ready to tackle the first course of bricks with energy and zest. However, it soon appeared that whilst we had been wilting in 38 degree Italian heat, England had sagged under several inches of torrential rainfall. This had returned our 3/4 filled trenches to an aqueous state and enthusiasm gave way to 'bugger it- let's just have a swimming pool' mentality. Grand aspirations for Warwickshire's first ampitheatre and Patheon dimmed, and the possibilities for Nuneaton's own Trevi Fountain seemed more likely.
From then on, we have been playing the waiting game. This is punctuated by an occasional frenzied dash into the garden to drop bricks into the water whenever there is a gap in the rain, a modern variation of the three coins in the fountain phenomenon. Meanwhile, my new chimnea smokes forbodingly at the bottom of the garden, heralding a new industrial age when Pimms under a parasol seems a far more tempting way of spending a summer evening than syphoning muddy trenchwater through a straw.
I leave you now to dash onto the driveway and lie prostrate in our aged trailer, as Alex attempts to measure it's length and breadth and work out whether we can transport Roman arches from Hinckley in it. Are we the only couple in England who are attempting a building project without actually owning a tape measure? I struggle to sit up in the trailer to answer my neighbour's query. Carpe Diem! I cry. (As I spot a fish swimming in our trenches)
Monday, 15 July 2013
Hop(e), Skip and a Jump(lead)
Dear Reader, you may have noticed my suspicious absence over the last week. I am blaming this on being unable to reach my house over the mountains of soil, dirt and clay surrounding our moat. 10 cubic yards of cement it took to fill the trenches. Having, admittedly only an elementary grasp of mathematical principles, we calculated that this would mean that 10 cubic yards of earth would therefore have been excavated, and consequently budgeted for 'A Helluva Big Skip'.
As with most things with this project, the seemingly straightforward tasks appear blighted with unforeseen issues ranging from the frustrating to the downright bizarre. Shoveling excavated soil was to become one of these. Weeks of heavy rainfall, combined with clay soil and the odd clump of concrete/ancient rock carving/radioactive waste, had formed into a mutant stew akin to superglue and dog poo (did you not see that Blue Peter episode?). Far from sliding effortlessly onto shovel, this stuck. To everything. We were forced to use the garden fork to bodge at bits of it and then cleave this from the tines with bare and sticky mits. This became less and less amusing as the days wore on, battling through outbursts of rain interspersed with sunshine so hot our skulls ached.
After days of such larks, Skip 1 was full. No amount of jumping/falling over would compress it any more. The skip hire company (which shall remain nameless due to impending lawsuit) displayed a tentative grasp of rudimentary logic and instead of collecting the full skip and replacing it with another, empty one, refused to answer their phone for several days. Work stopped. Tempers frayed. Dog poo glue failed as a entrepreneurial concept and the moat remained. On day 4 I returned home to find that the skip hire company had visited. However, the sight that presented itself as I turned into the cul-de-sac, weaving past puzzled onlookers and a guy who looked suspiciously like Damien Hirst, was nothing short of modern art. They had indeed fulfilled their promise to bring another empty skip. This they had placed on top of the full skip, leaving a rickety and mountainous structure on our driveway.
Several expletive-dappled conversations to the firm ensued and by the Thursday, we were (un)happily tackling the clay mountain once more. I am pleased to report that 2 skips later I am able to get down to my garden again (with the aid of a combat swing and a ladder). I am currently sitting in the sunshine rewriting a maths textbook to incorporate trench-logic and listing 'An Incredible New Adhesive- sticks like s**t!' on eBay.
As with most things with this project, the seemingly straightforward tasks appear blighted with unforeseen issues ranging from the frustrating to the downright bizarre. Shoveling excavated soil was to become one of these. Weeks of heavy rainfall, combined with clay soil and the odd clump of concrete/ancient rock carving/radioactive waste, had formed into a mutant stew akin to superglue and dog poo (did you not see that Blue Peter episode?). Far from sliding effortlessly onto shovel, this stuck. To everything. We were forced to use the garden fork to bodge at bits of it and then cleave this from the tines with bare and sticky mits. This became less and less amusing as the days wore on, battling through outbursts of rain interspersed with sunshine so hot our skulls ached.
After days of such larks, Skip 1 was full. No amount of jumping/falling over would compress it any more. The skip hire company (which shall remain nameless due to impending lawsuit) displayed a tentative grasp of rudimentary logic and instead of collecting the full skip and replacing it with another, empty one, refused to answer their phone for several days. Work stopped. Tempers frayed. Dog poo glue failed as a entrepreneurial concept and the moat remained. On day 4 I returned home to find that the skip hire company had visited. However, the sight that presented itself as I turned into the cul-de-sac, weaving past puzzled onlookers and a guy who looked suspiciously like Damien Hirst, was nothing short of modern art. They had indeed fulfilled their promise to bring another empty skip. This they had placed on top of the full skip, leaving a rickety and mountainous structure on our driveway.
Several expletive-dappled conversations to the firm ensued and by the Thursday, we were (un)happily tackling the clay mountain once more. I am pleased to report that 2 skips later I am able to get down to my garden again (with the aid of a combat swing and a ladder). I am currently sitting in the sunshine rewriting a maths textbook to incorporate trench-logic and listing 'An Incredible New Adhesive- sticks like s**t!' on eBay.
Monday, 1 July 2013
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