My name is called, badly. She might just as well have been shouting, “ham, egg and chips?” across a crowded cafe, as she slaps the latest batch of clearance emails down on the counter.
“That’s me.” I volunteer eagerly, glad to be first.
“ID?”
“Driving Licence.”
“Have you got the counterpart...Oh.” It falls out onto the desk.
“Got a vehicle?”
I state the number and this rigmarole continues until my pass is issued. I try not to say thanks, thanks for what? We’re all in here saying thanks for bugger all.
“Thanks.” Dah, I can’t help it, it’s hardwired in.
It’s like people who say ‘sorry’ when you bump into them. Is this the famous English politeness, or just some meaningless noise used to fill the post-incident silence? Over-politeness strikes some, particularly Latin people, as a bit dishonest. I’m sympathetic to this view. Added to which, shit services stay shit if you don’t voice your opinion. The danger in bottling it up and giving it all that stiff upper lip business is that if you do blow, you’re likely to go nuclear, over the top, out of the park. Then you look like the bad guy and lose by default. On the next occasion, try a controlled blow. It’s good for you, just don’t do it going through security.
What is good for me is getting that small shed erected in the garden and sorting out my workshop in the bigger one. We don’t own the house we so I tightly control the costs of any works I do on the property. The greenhouse was a freebie and most of the plants were from seed, Jane’s dad, or the reduced section at the garden centre. It’s not about being tight, it’s just that every pound you save is there to be reallocated. I still enjoy a few luxuries, I just try to consider all the options when something comes up.
To this end, I’ve scrounged some roofing felt – at the same time helping Old Pete to clear out a corner of his workshop. There’s just not enough of it, so I purloined (with permission) a piece of polythene from a building site to make up the difference. The front edge of the shed roof is rotten requiring patching prior to erection. This was my task yesterday. I couldn’t visualise installing a new verge with nothing solid to attach it directly to, so I decided to just start by tidying up the rotten ends of the planks.
Using a pry, or crow-bar I start knocking out the rotten wood. Poz trots up the path with a spanner to help. It’s not quite the use intended for the tool but I’ve told him daddy has jobs to do and to him this means 'get tools'. He wants to help, he’s sourced a tool and he can do no damage so I let him join in. It’s evident as we whack away that the boards are coming loose so I reckon it’s a good idea to stabalise them by fixing a batten across. I pull out my cordless drill, Poz clocks this, drops his spanner and scampers back up to the house. He hates drilling, poor little guy, after I put some shelves up in his room once with a screaming hammer drill.
This tidy up/stabalisation approach develops into a kind of three-pronged verge support. As is often the case, just getting started kind of shakes the tree and the ideas come tumbling out. I don’t bother filling in the gaps where the timber has rotten away, thinking that the stiff roofing felt will span this directly. I reinforce the corners, fix the verge rail (a piece of discarded fencing timber) in place and squeeze wood glue into all the joints before tightening, to promote a general stiffness in the repair.
The next bit is to fix the roof coverings on, which is straightforward as it goes, even though I'm worried that the polythene will quickly rot when exposed to UV radiation. I haven't a (free) solution for this at the time and it’s as much as I can do in an afternoon before I have to pack up, one step closer to my goal. This in itself could be frustrating but the job otherwise seems a good ‘un and a little bit of progress each day is all I can reasonably ask. This is the basis of the 'no journey wasted' approach after all.
