More on walls

It is a little understood quirk of human nature that we all like to stand around and watch others working, undertaking manual tasks of one sort or another, particularly when those working are good at what they do (or at least seem to be). This is the reason viewing windows are placed in the hoardings around large building sites and it also goes a long way towards explaining why we have so many programmes on TV dedicated to cooking. Simply watching other people is not quite sufficient, they really need to be doing something worthwhile to hold the attention fully. Better still, of course, is if they are doing something destructive. Demolition will always beat construction if for no better reason than because it is a quicker process, satisfaction coming much earlier and holding on right until the end.

We have waited months for our opportunity to watch the destruction of a wall separating our kitchen from the living room and when the moment finally came it was every bit as satisfying and exciting as we expected, perhaps even more so.
There was a terrific banging noise accompanied by vibration which shook both our house and our neighbours’ but slowly, starting at the top, a hole appeared which became larger and larger until it could no longer even be called a hole.

Peering through the cloud of choking plaster dust, so fine that it penetrated the covers placed over our furniture and crept into firmly closed cupboards, we began to see daylight from the other side of our house, light from another world. Slowly our two rooms became one as the hole became a whole.

For all this fun we have to thank our builders, Geoff and Andrew, two brothers who take the whole process in their stride and who certainly don’t seem in the least bit phased by the fact that with the wall down, the house is now supported only by slender steel bars placed around the room.

We just stand open-mouthed as we try to take in what they have done, then smile. Without curtains at the back or the front our neighbours now have a fine view of our back yard they never had before but who cares, we’ll deal with that later. The vision held in our heads is finally a reality, albeit a dusty one.

With the rubble carted off to fill the skip on the front lawn, next comes the job of placing our massive steel girder in position across the ceiling where it will hold the house together again.

This is a three-man lift, above head height, so we all muck in, again our two lads staying as cool as cucumbers as we move the props into place. It is terrifying to watch this, but far worse to actually be involved in it, as one false move will let gravity take over with forces far too great for any of us to handle. Fortunately the procedure goes off without a hitch and there it is, a red steel bar sitting up there just where it should be, with more props in place preventing the floor from hitting the ceiling.

There is much still to do but the day comes to a close and our building brothers depart leaving us in peace for the weekend. We would like to sit and stare, to get the feel of our new space, but more of the white dust which coats everything floats around us so it is not yet a place to linger.

It needs to be left alone to settle out so we adjourn upstairs, carefully, lest we disturb the equilibrium beneath.

The morning after and our vacuum cleaner overheats as it tries to suck against a blocked filter but gradually our lives return to something approaching normality. Looking around we begin to notice little things, unexpected vistas now having opened up. After drastically pruning the upper branches of the tree in our front garden, we hung what was left with fat balls and a seed-filled feeder in the hope that this might attract the odd passing wildfowl. Word travelled so quickly that by the time we emerged to partake of our breakfast, the starlings were well into second helpings. And sitting at our table in what was previously our back-facing kitchen we find we can now peer out front and watch all the bickering and chatter, the acrobatics and the aerobatics. Far from being dull, seen close up starlings are brilliantly coloured birds whose feathers have an iridescent sheen when they catch the sun. But they have few manners and do rather take over the place so sparrows and blue tits need to be fearlessly bold if they are to get a look in.

We are also starting to navigate around the house differently, using only the former living room door to enter our large new room. Our builders are contracted to block off the former internal kitchen door so that we can install a new kitchen across the same space, a kitchen that is already ordered and on its way. But by what name should we refer to our new and vast open-plan kitchen/diner/living room. Ideas on a postcard please but Kate has already rejected my suggestions of ‘The Auditorium’, ‘The Hanger’ and ‘O Mighty One’. It may just end up being ‘The Space’.

MENDING WALL by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

---

Ours is a wall past mending, a wall that is now no more.

The poem was written about another wall, one on the poet’s grandfather’s farm in Derry, New Hampshire. Here is a picture of the wall in question, included here to put this beautiful writing in context. Had ours been a wall like this, made of massive lumps of stone, we too would have been mending. Walls like this bring back memories of our own travels in places where all the land is contained within similar boundaries.

Time for a change

For virtually no good reason at all, we have changed the look of trotty.net, the whole thing now having a much more watery theme [This site is no longer active]. The blog is now replicated in Blogger (where you won’t notice any change) and WordPress. These two sentences will mean something to those with a keen interest in the world of the Internet and a good knowledge of the world of blogging but maybe less to others. For everyone though, we hope you like it. Feel free to pass comment using the link below.

Meanwhile the focus of lives has shifted upwards to our guttering at the back of the house which, perhaps in sympathy with some of the internal pipes, leaked when it rains. The drips from this seem to accelerate to near light speed whilst falling and hit the ground underneath with a deep thud, something which at first we don’t notice but eventually this crept into our consciousness and became annoying. I resolve to climb up there and fix it so when dry, sunny weather arrives I’m up a ladder with my sealant gun, squirting the stuff into every crack I can find. We had to wait no more than a few days for some good heavy rain to test my repair – it is fixed.

Kate is currently on a mission with some new paint brushes we bought in a rush of enthusiasm at our favourite DIY store. The boundary wall and fence around our back yard have succumbed and turned cream and brown, after which she shut herself in our largest bedroom and applied ‘Bumble’ to the walls. Someone, somewhere must be making a fortune thinking up names for paint colours although I must confess it is not a science I have ever properly understood. What sort of a mind thinks up things like ‘Feather Down’ or ‘Lunar Falls’ and expects us to associate it with a colour? And why would you want to paint ‘Delicate Cobweb’ or ‘Dragon’s Blood’ on your walls anyway? Notwithstanding this, the effect in the bedroom is highly agreeable and it is one step forward in our top to bottom refurbishment. We are still waiting for our designated builders to find time to come in and change our lives by merging our downstairs living space into one so jobs like this fill in our time nicely.

Taking some time out from decorating we wander up Wyndham Hill which lies on the south-eastern edge of Yeovil and whose summit is graced by three very ancient trees which we think are elm. Their heart-wood is long gone leaving hollowed spaces to climb into and investigate but somehow the massive trees remain standing. If they are elm then they have survived Dutch elm disease and no doubt many other traumas in their long lives.

This is a grand spot from which to admire the countryside for miles around. We are afforded a view across the town as well, even as far as the grass airfield used by the aircraft factory which lies at the centre of this town. For Yeovil is where helicopters are made, Westland helicopters, to be precise, and without this big employer the place would be a shadow of what it is today. Helicopters, of course, are used by the police and military so the fate of Yeovil is very much dependent upon national security and defence spending plans. Recently many in the town have been holding their breath while the government carries out its defence spending review but there are happy faces around now the outcomes are known. The news is good for Westlands and that is good for the town too. This may mean a few more helicopters over-flying our house but I suppose we shouldn’t complain.

Finally I tackle the wall in our front garden which is leaning dangerously as if with the slightest knock it might fall over. Over the years the tree growing adjacent to the wall has expanded, its roots gradually tipping the foundations from underneath, thus making the whole structure lean dangerously sideways and unstable, or so we thought. Expecting that no more than a few hammer blows would bring the thing tumbling down I ventured forth dressed in protective gloves and boots but soon discovered, to my dismay, that all is not quite as it appears. The concrete blocks resist my efforts to bring them down. I rapidly reach the same conclusion that Police Chief Martin Brody reached in the film, Jaws, when on first confronting the giant fish he said, ‘We need a bigger boat’. I need a bigger hammer and even with this I see many more days of effort stretched before me. The wall seems determined to hang together and oppose my efforts to remove it. But I will not be defeated.

Reconstruction begins

Yet another minor excitement in our property improvement lives…. our new shed has been delivered, in pieces and complete with a rich smell of preservative. Originally our plan was to throw out the pre-existing one, a misshapen and rotting thing that stands (just) in our back yard, home though it is to every wood-loving creepy-crawly for miles around and safe haven though it is for spiders so large, it is a wonder we don’t hear them stomping around at night. But then we discovered that we could actually move the structure sideways a little way without too much of it falling off or disintegrating to dust and having done this, a brand new one will fit nicely on the old concrete platform. Well, you can never have too many sheds, can you? One of them will soon act as a garage for our cycle trailer, soon coming home to us after living with friends Rich & Gerry for a few years.

The shed is the first part of our order placed a few days ago which started as a long shopping list of kitchen-related parts but which we added to once we realised that the discount we were being offered would be applied to anything we bought at the store that day. We very quickly thought up some more goodies, throwing in some rather nice flooring which we have used to cover up the bare and rather unattractive chipboard in one of our bedrooms. We do a lot of our shopping for materials at B&Q, largely because every Wednesday is their ‘Over 60’s’ day when they offer discount to all who have reached this age. As you might expect, on these days the place is full of grey-haired old men and the clatter of Zimmer frames can be deafening but fortunately they also employ people of a certain age at the checkout. It was here we met Reg who was in no doubt that his role was mainly to ‘translate’ for those who need it - things like metric measurements for those who grew up with imperial or the wonders of the economy light bulb.

We really feel we are turning a new leaf and getting into reconstruction mode now, using different skills and different muscles too, many of which are complaining, but then that’s nothing new. There are still little distractions, of course, like when the house catches us out with one of its bits of botched DIY. One evening we spotted water emerging from beneath the refrigerator, just a small pool, but it was coming from somewhere hidden away at the back. Investigation revealed a tiny hole in an innocent looking water pipe which had been dribbling happily away for days, even weeks. Replacing this pipe with a new section disturbed another joint nearby which started squirting water down the wall and once again this needed to be ripped apart and replaced. These are examples of poor quality plumbing work that is dotted about the house, little of which is fatal but it is annoying when the water won’t stay inside the pipes.

While I am still grovelling under the sink, Kate is watching TV, absorbed as I have never seen her before. She is not normally much of a sports fan but the Commonwealth Games in Delhi has been the focus of her attention for some days now as she waits for the hammer-throwers to begin. Why?

Because she has a nephew competing, not for this country but for Australia, in this little-understood event. We both still remember him as a small boy when he visited the the UK and came out for a walk with us. His concern over dangerous snakes in our countryside was a rather touching sign of his Aussie-ness. Both Simon and his brother Jamie giggled and imitated the word “woods” in a terribly English accent, then corrected the name. “It’s not woods, it’s the bush, Auntie Kate”. Simon Wardhaugh is now a giant of man but still very young for his chosen sport and the 5th place he gained at the Games does him great credit, competing against some of the best in the world. Well done mate!

We are spending much time out of doors here this week as it has been unseasonably warm and dry for some days.

Time therefore to crack on with jobs that will soon become impossible when the rain arrives and the cold winds recommence, like repainting the fence and wall around our back yard. Kate calls my attention to the telephone wires above us where no less than twenty-eight goldfinches are sitting watching us and laughing, no doubt, at our attempts to entice them to our seed feeder. We know there are thistles in full seed in the country park just a short flight away, far more tasty than what we have on offer. These birds will soon be packing for their flight over to Spain where most of them will spend the winter. Let’s hope they make it!

The Visit

After waiting expectantly at home all morning, finally we peer through our front window to see a white car draw gently to a halt at the kerbside. A silver-haired head turns our way and a small hand appears above the door to wave. Our distinguished visitors have arrived. We go out to meet them as the car door cracks open and my mother emerges creakily onto the pavement, still stiff from three hours of travel. We hug her slender body as her companion, George, unfolds his own lanky body from behind the wheel across the other side of the car and advances towards us, hand outstretched in greeting.

Inside the house planning for the visit of the ‘Seniors’ has been the focus of our attention for some days, even weeks, as we are aware that our half-renovated property will struggle to provide them with many of the comforts they are used to in their own homes. We do not have soft carpets underfoot, the walls are bare, plaster pitted and cracked, still scarred from our scraping at the many layers of wallpaper and there is an unfinished look about everything. But at least the sun has come out for their arrival and the air is warm, unseasonably so for early October.

Although it may be a little irreverent to mention this, we cannot help but see a parallel with another recent distinguished visit. The pope is similarly advanced in years and preparations for his arrival were no doubt made long in advance (and at considerable cost). There would have been a dedicated team who, like us, were concerned to make sure everything went smoothly, to ensure that his comforts and needs were provided for. And there was even a white car.

We were greatly relieved (if that is the correct word) when our builders finally arrived to unwrap the toilet that had languished for weeks in our living room (it had made a convenient coffee table) and install this in our downstairs cloakroom. The flushing noise was like music to our ears, timed just days before the Seniors’ visit began and giving us a much needed downstairs facility. Unlike the pontiff, however, the beatification of a new saint does not feature as the highlight of our visitation. We settle for Sunday lunch at our local, the Great Western, with sons Mike and Tony joining us.

No sooner had our visitors left than we found ourselves engaged in some heavy kitchen planning. Everything from the wall cupboard doors down to the floor we’ll soon be standing on has to be ordered. Every screw, each hinge and knob, every last millimetre has to be accounted for, our biggest dread being that the bits and pieces we buy won’t fit in the available space, or the reverse, we will have gaps left over with nothing to fill them.

Some hours later we have a terrifyingly long list in front of us and we know when to expect delivery.

But of course none of this can be fitted until our builders have opened up the house, front to back, by removing our internal wall. The whole kitchen is planned around this. We know that this is scheduled to happen quite soon but were still surprised when, on arriving home from the DIY store, we find an enormous lump of steel in our back yard. We still don’t know how they got it there, over a two metre wall and past a locked gate, (maybe someone else dumped it there) but it is just what we need to prevent the bedroom wall and the roof above it from tumbling to the ground after their support is removed. This beam will soon become part of the structure of our house, giving us a view from front to back so we can view the sunrises and sunsets from wherever we are.