I had a wry smile as I scoffed my toast
this morning. A Facebook Friend had written about her most recent place of
work: "Tried to forget about this
place but up pops an FB 'See Your Memories!" The memory was from a
couple of years ago when she supposedly won a workplace lottery. She went on to
say "Never did get the money. Just
another example of how nasty and untrustworthy some of them are".
I can remember (about ten years ago) being co-opted onto a committee with this
person. Where we worked at the time had recently installed a staff suggestion
box. Me, her and a couple of others had to consider the merits of all the
various staff suggestions. This person dominated the committee; rudely and
patronisingly throwing out every single suggestion that was made. What goes
around comes around?
As I’d worked yesterday I wasn’t working
today. And so "er indoors TM" had taken the day
off. We’d planned to go canoeing on the Medway, but the weather forecast wasn’t
good for that. So as "er indoors TM" snored I
walked the dogs round the park. As we walked Fudge straggled more and more
until we saw our Irish friend and Fudge was like a bullet form a gun sprinting
to try to hump his dog.
I wish he wouldn’t do that.
We came home to find that "er
indoors TM" had emerged from her pit. Both dogs scoffed
their brekkie. Treacle always does; "Furry Face TM"
is far more picky, but going for a walk before brekkie dies give him an
appetite. I hung out the washing and gathered the turds strewn around the
garden. How can two small dogs create so much dung?
I’ve had some stick about the fact that
we really do clear up the dog turds in our garden. Several people have said
they just leave their dogs’ turds where they fall. Eeeww !!!!
We drove round to collect "My
Boy TM"; with canoeing on hold we thought we’d go have a
look in Whelans and the first fruit of my loin fancied coming for the ride.
Having made the garden pond look good, the decking area in front of it looked
rather tired. I had an idea to replace it with some paving slabs. Whelan’s is
the place for that sort of thing.
We got to Sheerness and saw exactly the
sort of thing I had in mind (as well as
some random Whelan statues and stuff), we handed over the credit card, and
brought the stuff home. "er indoors TM" took the
dogs for a little walk whist we unloaded the car, and then we hoiked the
decking out of the way.
Oh dear….
I had rather hoped that the area under
the decking was level. Having level ground was rather fundamental to my plans.
The ground was far from level.
I
drove "My Boy TM" home whilst I pondered this
setback. I needed a level surface… so I lifted the weed-proof membranes, dug
the ground over, laid down some flat wood (the
sort of thing you put in the back of a wardrobe) and put the slabs in
place.
They looked bloody awful.
The problem was the flat wood. If it had
been a lump two metres in each direction it might have worked. But having had
to cobble It together out of smaller lumps didn’t work. They didn’t lay flat;
they were all over the place. So I lifted the slabs, lifted the weed-proof
membranes, and dug it all over again. It was at this point that he cavalry
arrived; "My Boy TM" had come to see what I had
been whinging about. We got the membranes back down, and laid the slabs. With
soft ground and no silly bits of wood underneath, the slabs went into position
far better. They were a little uneven, but we walked about on them to sort them
out, and they will settle. Once they’ve settled I’ll sort any final
irregularities.
Because the slabs covered a smaller area
than the decking we needed more shingle, so we went to B&Q. They were
selling the shingle we wanted with a discount if you bought ten bags or more.
We needed six bags, but six bags cost nineteen quid. For twenty-two quid we
could have ten bags.
We got ten bags, and having used the six
we needed we have four in reserve (just
in case). I anyone has the kind of emergency that needs four bags of
shingle, I’m your man.
"My Boy TM"
set off home, and I started carefully disassembling the decking, Rather than
ripping it apart I really was careful. Some of it will go to the tip tomorrow,
but I plan to build some little planters out of some of the left-over decking,
I then got a text message - "er
indoors TM" was outside. I probably wasn’t dressed to go to
PC World, but I squirted some deodorant in the general direction of my armpits
and off we went. The nice man was very helpful, and following quite a bit of
advice from people on Facebook I went for a HDMI upscaling DVD player which
will automatically turn my DVDs into HD. Not that I can actually see any
difference between HD and normal telly.
"er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner and then went bowling. I’m going to watch the end of
the film I tried to watch on Saturday evening.
I’ve had a rather good day off today, but
I’m still feeling rather miffed. It didn’t rain and I had been looking forward
to canoeing…
No comments:
Post a Comment