It could have been a dose of the sun yesterday; it could have been too much physical exertion yesterday; or too much noise in the evening. Whatever it was I spent most of the night with an awful headache, and finally gave up trying to sleep at 6am. After a bite of brekkie I was in the garden and before 7am I was painting the decking we made yesterday. I then started on today’s project and got all the ground work done that I could. By 9am I’d reached the point where I needed more ingredients from the garden centre, so I loaded the car with the wreckage we’d generated yesterday and thought I’d do a tip run before the garden centre opened; after all, who would be at the tip at 9am on a Bank Holiday Sunday?
It turned out that most of humanity was there: I joined the queue two streets away from the tip. There was a dodgy five minutes when I got to being only one street away. Someone tried to barge his car into the queue, and succeeded. The chap in the car in front of me got out, marched up to the queue-barger and loudly announced that if the chap didn’t join the end of the queue, then he would get the side of his car kicked in. The queue-barger soon drove to the end of the queue.
But the queue moved reasonably quickly, and it only took twenty minutes from joining the queue to being able to empty my car.
Home, to find ‘er indoors TM was up and about. She said she wanted to come to the garden centre with me, so we set off to what used to be WyeVale. I got some of the edging stones I needed, but not all. They didn’t have the wave design. So we popped to Bybrook Barn on the way home. Once home ‘er indoors TM went off shopping whilst I sorted out the edging stones and weed-proofing membrane. There was a dodgy five minutes at one point. One of my edging stones was six centimetres longer than I needed. I had this plan to use a hammer and chisel, and to carefully shave off the excess stone. So I gave the thing a hefty wallop with the hammer and it split in two. Unfortunately nowhere near where I needed the break to be. So I used the larger half of the stone, and bodged the gap that was left with an off-cut from the decking I did yesterday. But despite this little set-back , my progress was a lot faster than I was expecting, and so with time to spare I went back to Bybrook Barn. I wanted some brindle chippings and a compass paving stone that had caught my eye earlier. Unfortunately for me, “Mr Useless” was on the till. He took one look at my compass paving stone and announced it was in the other catalogue, but he didn’t have the other catalogue. He then repeated that statement continuously. After five minutes it was apparent he’d got stuck in a loop, so I interrupted to ask if he was going to sell it to me, or should I take my money elsewhere. It was at this point that the manager (who’d been watching all along) came over and ran the compass paving stone through the till as a “miscellaneous item”; even though it was in the other catalogue and “Mr Useless” didn’t have the other catalogue. “Mr Useless” looked as though he was going to cry, and a nice lady took over operating the till. She apologised to me for my having to wait.
Home again, and with the chippings in place I laid my compass paving stone. There was a minor hiccup in that I’m not entirely sure which way north is. We tried using a compass, but the needle was continuously swinging through ninety degrees; and it even reversed itself and went through 180o at one point. In the end I sort of lined it up with the way that Google Maps said was north. It’s probably not that far off.
With the garden done (for now), the Folkestone contingent arrived and we set off to Hastings Labrador had five puppies three weeks ago, and we went to see them. Very sweet, but I’m being strong and not having one. Dogs cost a fortune, and with the life that I lead I’d never be about to have any time for a dog.
And then home again, and with ‘er indoors TM gone bowling, I went back to work in the garden. Another coat of paint for the decking, and the lawn needed mowing. I was told that the lawn didn’t look like it needed mowing, but personally I think that’s the trick of keeping a lawn in order. Mow it regularly once a week and it doesn’t look like it needs mowing.
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