Week Seven

Apologies for the delay - the week started easily enough!

Monday:  Fill in drainage trench.  Apart from the sheer physical labour and the nagging feeling that THE BUILDERS SHOULD HAVE DONE IT, easy enough.
Tuesday:  Dig out part of electric trench – the one the builders had filled in.  Apart from the concrete the builders had chucked in, easy enough.  MY POOL HAS BEEN SHIPPED.  Very exciting!


Wednesday:  Guy and I start to dig the main electric trench.  It is going all along the edge of the lawn and will be covered with a brick line to make mowing easier – I meant to do this years ago and never got round to it – which is lucky, as if I had, we’d be digging them all up again…  Very hard work – lots of little tree roots and RUBBLE, of course.

Thursday – evening off!  I have decided I rather like my incredibly short haircut from hell, so go to have it trimmed again.  Wyn the Wire phones to say we’re all set for Saturday to lay the cable, but that it is VERY heavy (75kg) so we arrange that I will go to his house early to help manhandle it back into his car.

Friday – we finish the electric trench.  We are ridiculously pleased with ourselves!  Have Chinese takeaway and fall asleep on sofa…

Saturday 8am – I find a stray cat in my utility room, pick BB up to let it out, stray moves, BB goes ballistic and sticks ALL of his claws into my arm and hand.  He eventually lets go (I think the screams did it) and I discover my arm and hand are seriously punctured and lacerated.  Blood everywhere.  I (a) panic (b) burst into tears and (c) phone for help.  Mum and Guy arrive in double quick time and administer TLC, brandy and bandages.  The brandy was purely medicinal – I appear to have gone into shock.  However, it has the desired effect and a lovely warm glow surrounds me – apart from the arm which is raging hot.  I am now completely useless.  My fingers can just move, but I can’t even open my post (I tried).  So how, exactly, am I going to help lift a 75kg cable drum?  We decide to call in the troops, and Guy phones Darren the Digger who has his first day off in 6 weeks planned, but drops everything to come to the rescue.  He arrives, we drive off to Wyn the Wire, and stand around discussing the best way to shift this incredibly heavy cable.  During which time, Darren the Digger simply picks it up and puts it in his car!  That’s the first problem cured, then!

Back home again, Darren the Digger unwinds the cable, it gets laid in the trench, Wyn the Wire clips it to the house very neatly, the cable gets covered with sand, lovely yellow plastic saying ‘WARNING ELECTRIC CABLE BELOW’ more sand and then the line of bricks.  I take absolutely no part in this – I have gone a lovely putty colour and go to bed, freezing cold despite the sunshine.  Shock, apparently.  Darren the Digger wonders how much I paid BB so I could have a day off….

Sunday:  I start typing this. Left hand very infected and size of a watermelon… I go to hospital where they want to admit me to be put on IV antibiotics for 24 hours.  Luckily no beds, so I am sent home at 4 with strict instructions to return at 7pm, midnight and 6am for more drugs…

Am hugely frustrated that I have safely been lugging slabs, building walls, laying concrete bases and digging trenches without any problem and then get laid off by A BLOODY CAT.  To Whom I Am Not Speaking, by the way.

Hours worked: Quite a few before the weekend, then ZILCH.  Apart from Guy who has done enough hours for at least two people, and Janice (Mrs Wyn) who helped hugely with the bricking…


Achieved:  Drainage trench filled in, entire electric trench dug, cable laid and clipped to house, filled in and lawn brick edged.  And mostly without my help.
Wine consumed: Remarkably little.  Until Saturday, when I had a brandy before 8.30am.  Hope it isn’t habit forming.
Skills achieved: Ability to unscrew bottles holding between my knees.  Have mastered the important stuff – bubble bath, olive oil and Sloe Gin.
Pressies  and Purchases – bought 540m of tongue and groove to finish the inside of the shed. That’s a LOT of tongue and groove.  And it all has to be stained…
Shed Progress:  Delivery next Wednesday!  Will I still be one-handed, or able to help?
Pool Progress: IT’S ON IT’S WAY!  It left the US on Tuesday so it’s somewhere on the ATLANTIC.  Let’s hope there are no icebergs…
And finally, a cheery grin from the invalid!


Postscript:  On Sunday when I went back for my next dose the nurses took one look at me, said I looked horrible (thanks, that makes me feel SO much better) and kept me in for two days…. so now it's Tuesday and the shed is due to arrive tomorrow.  I have been on a ward where I lowered the average age by about 40 years and was the only one that kept my teeth in at night.  Time for a bath and some sleep! 

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