Week Six

Tuesday is a fun day – it’s Guy’s birthday!  Given the amount of work he has put in for this pool, I decide to really spoil him, so give him the ultimate present: The Hazelwood Pool Installation Survival Kit.  Contents:  Bottle of Whisky, Bottle of Radox Muscle Soak, Industrial Strength Hand Cream.  I can tell he is pleased – speechless in fact.  See – I can do this ‘spoiling’ stuff.

On Wednesday NPower are booked to come and change the meter for a ‘cheap electricity overnight’ meter. This is to heat the pool which I don’t yet have and was arranged some weeks ago.  I stay at home until 9.30 when mum arrives to house sit while I go to work.  Mum arrives, man doesn’t.  At 12 she phones NPower who say yes, the man is on his way.  2pm still no man.  She phones again.  This time they say that they can’t put the meter in until ALL of the other electrical work is done and completed – total change of tune.  Mum is justifiably furious (if you haven’t met my mum rest assured that she can do ‘furious’ like no other) and gives them several pieces of her mind.  They say they will pay £20 compensation.  Which will pay for two bottles of restorative brandy for one irate mother.  However, the day improves when the Pool People phone to say my pool will be shipped NEXT TUESDAY!  This is terrific – especially as I have no base, no shed and no electrics.  Marvellous – Things Are Clearly Going Well.



On Thursday Mike the Base arrives early with more idiot builders to lay the final slab.  They appear to know what they have to do (or am I just past caring?) and I leave for work.  When I return home I find that I HAVE A BASE WOO HOO!  I am VERY EXCITED!  Excitement is slightly tempered by finding that they have dumped all the spare bits of concrete in … the electrical trench.  I get a spade and dig it all back out again.

Mike the Base returns later for his money and offers his team’s services for further building work (and I know my utility room needs rebuilding).  Oddly, I feel slightly faint at the prospect.
The really good news is that, besides all the normal building debris, he has left behind TWO cement mixers and TWO wheelbarrows.  This means I have a breeding pair of each.  I hope that, given warm weather and the right environment I will soon have enough of each to start a shop.  Or sell them on Ebay.  My mind is clearly wandering and I should perhaps lay off the Sloe Gin.

On Friday, better news still!  Keith the Shed phones to say that they are starting my sheds next week and he will deliver them the week after!  WOO HOO AGAIN!  Too much excitement for one week….

Saturday Guy and I HAVE A DAY OFF FROM POOL STUFF!!!  This means we rip out an old fireplace in his house before breakfast until we closely resemble SAS Night Time Assault (Camouflage) recruits, spend an hour cleaning up all the soot and ourselves (another excellent tidemark in bath!) and hurtle off up the Valleys to look at wood burning stoves.  Guy buys an excellent green enamel wood burning stove, and I buy a wicker fishing basket for the pool room.  We have a picnic in the Brecon Beacon National Park with Blunkett and she swims for the very first time in a shallow pond.  Apart from the fireplace thing, almost a proper day off!

On Sunday we whizz to the salvage yard to choose slabs (for outside the French windows of the pool room) armed with chalk and a measuring tape so that I can pick slabs, lay them out in the pattern I want, mark them up, make a plan and re-lay them when I get them home.  Instead, I see a pallet piled with slabs that ‘looks about right’ I buy it, they’ll deliver and we’ll wing it from there.  The chalk and measuring tape return home unused.  We spend the rest of the day chainsawing debris from the old garage, two Leylandii in the wrong place and two disgusting doors Mike the Base left because he thinks I want wood for burning and doesn’t understand the difference between ‘logs’ and ‘rubbish’.  It is very hot and, yet again, we end up very dirty.   This is becoming A Habit.

Hours worked: Not that bad!  Half an hour digging concrete out of the elec trench, rather a lot of hours chainsawing on the hottest day of the year so far and two hours dismantling Guy’s fireplace but that doesn’t count because it’s Not To Do With The Pool.
Achieved:  I HAVE A BASE!  I am still excited about this!  And Things Are On Their Way – pools and sheds and slabs and stuff.  Exciting week!
Casualties: Two ex-Leylandii.  That’s ok, they deserved to be ex.
Wine consumed: Three bottles.  Well, it was Guy’s birthday….
Pressies and Purchases: Fabulous fishing basket, unknown quantity of slabs on a pallet, more Sloe Gin.
Endangered Species News: One of the wheelbarrows and one of the cement mixers have taken flight.  Sadly no prospect of breeding.  Am suitably gutted.

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