Five days off. How would you have used it?
Monday…
I organised space for shed building supplies that were imminently due for delivery. I moved two pallets for the sand and aggregates to a spot near the shed foundation pour site and laid boards nearer the house to stack the lumber. Out front, I broke up and extracted a couple square meters of 3 inch thick concrete that used to cover the front garden soil. A similar return-to-the-land effort is slated out back over the next few weeks (although the front may get done using some Victorian tiling…stay tuned).
On a break, I caught up with the blogs of some old friends with the best post coming from our Brownie reviewing the Nuns of Brixton show a few weeks back. Another personal fave — but only because of an incident that slowly killed itself over the coarse of a few years (or was it only months? time is a motherfucker, ain’t it?) –is back online, and I hope it finds its old legs.
Cooked Rad Prik Prawns with fried onions and sautéed cabbage.Drink may have been involved.
Tuesday:
Jackie was also off work, Tuesday, and helped transfer the lumber part of the building supplies delivery from the street to the back garden (not a euphimism). We shifted two 6 foot by 6 foot fence panels, 75 framing studs, 20 sheets of 4 by 8 foot plywood(some cladding with a bit of thick stuff for flooring and roofing), 35 x 32 kg (about 70 pounds) bags of gravel, 25 by 36 kg (80-ish pounds) of sand, and 10 bags of bone dry cement (20 kg — 44 pounds). Crossfit can suck a bag of dicks (I know I said that earlier this week, but it bears repeating…not just because Marjorie Taylor Greene is a proponent).
Salmon, spinach, and soft cheese with herbs in filo dough (a Salmon en croute, if you will) and a Gavi after a British dry white wine starter. Or ,what passes for dry. Drink may have been involved.
Wednesday: The weather forecast only gave me a few clear hours to do any outdoor work so I focused on the pointing in the back wall. The rain came, as expected, between noon and 5. Intermittent but occasionally heavy, it put the kibosh on plans to pour the slab and I settled in to some of the detail work in the house (there is always plenty to do).
Roasted a turkey breast for panini but drink was not involved.
Thursday: A break in the rain allowed the long awaited concrete pour. I set aside 5 hours but the mud was mixed and crudely spread in just under 3 including a beer break at roughly the halfway point.
I had to pick up a darby and some other stuff at Screwfix and decided to document the adverts along the tramline (tramverts). The BooHoo girls went up in January and the SheinToff one a few weeks later. These are at almost every stop and if the longevity of others before them is any guide these will continue to dominate the daily commute for 6-10 months longer. I’ll update tramverts as they appear:
Knackered at the end of the day (there was still a lot of finishing to do after the terrifyingly mad rush of the initial pour), we had an Indian takeaway feast.
Drink was most certainly involved.
Friday: Little to do in the morning, I pulled the stakes off the forms and hosed off the top of the slab but needed to stay inside or very close to the house until the skip delivery. Drink may have been involved.
Saturday: We started loading the rest of the skip first thing. Overnight some cock sucker left a rolled up pink carpet in the skip. Ass monkey.
I made a pizza for supper. Drink may have been involved.
Sunday: Shirking and recovering from whole body muscle aches. Made a pot of broth. Fish tacos for supper. Drink may have been involved.
Fines and fees: £44.50 Mileage: a scant 25.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 