Back breaking work?
Finally got around to finding some time to do some work today.
My garden needed work and it was beginning to look a bit, well, untidy. Whenever I’d get home through the night I’d notice that it was really looking shabby and I found myself wondering what all the neighbours might be thinking. Y’know that bloke who’s moved in, he never seems to be there and look at his garden, well you’d have never seen it in that state when whassername lived there.
I had let it go though, the chaps who’d fixed up my stove had left bits of brickwork, concrete, stone and other ephemera here and there. Not their fault they have a job to do, I know it should be down to me but I’d really not had a moment to get around to do it, let alone had any daylight hours to tackle it.
There were other problems too, the last Leylandii had been cut down a couple of weeks back and the logs were littering the garden. Not only that there were a bunch of twigs and rather a lot of sawdust littering the garden. There were also two pallets higgledy piggledy near a window, mixed bits of rubbish and just a general feeling of unlovedness about my garden.
Now as I might have mentioned I’d not had a moment last week what with my Mum in hospital and my daughter’s 4th birthday party, cut this with work and driving to and from work and this was the first moment that I’d had to tackle a job in the house for ages.
The other problem was the last time I’d tackled a bunch of logs I’d taken the job in my stride but found that two hours later I could barely bend over. This was not how I wanted to end up at the end of the day.
So with some trepidation I started off the day with cleaning and lighting the fire, putting the washing in, having a spot of breakfast and then strapping on a large weightlifters belt, enough clothing to mount a polar expedition and headed for the garden.
I started by sorting out the log store, moving odd scraps of wood to accommodate the new intake, surely it wouldn’t be more than the last load, that was around five trees, this one is only,,,, one.
Getting my trusty Chillington wheelbarrow I headed heroically off to the log pile.
Looking at the pile there was one obvious problem, some of the logs were flipping huge. This Leylandii must have been on steroids compared to the one in the other garden, that or the tree surgeon had not bothered cutting this one up as much. On closer inspection and reflection it turned out that this tree was just a lot more muscular than the last one and these huge logs, despite my back worries had to be tackled.
I picked out the biggest, rolled the wheelbarrow into position, stood it on its end (it was a couple of feet across but only around nine inches tall) and tilted it into the wheelbarrow which went sprong and immediately toppled on its side. Not good, not good at all.
Plan two then, in real Stone Age man fashion I lifted the log by the end and rolled it end to end across the garden into the log store. This I then I had to do with the next five or so logs, some big blighters the were and it wasn’t till I’d cleared these that I could manage the rest in the wheelbarrow.
The logpile grew and grew, what I thought was a tidy bunch of logs turned out to be quite massive and I ended up with a taller but less deep pile than the one I’d created some weeks back from the previous log cutting exercise. This whole trundle across the garden took around two and half hours and it was pretty back breaking work, still though my back wasn’t niggling but this is how it had all unfolded last time, no problems while doing the job but plenty later.
Anyway once this was done I tidied up all the fallen branches in the garden and piled them up where I intended to locate a skip I was planning on having delivered some day .
I then set about the concrete and bricks. I split them into piles of stones that I would be keeping and another of scrap bricks, concrete and bits of old fireplace. I tried to salvage a few more tiles from the fireplace but only managed to successfully remove a handful without chipping them. I was shocked to find a piece of concrete revealing some ancient tiles when I whopped it onto the pile, they were nestling inside it – don’t know how – they were really flowery and decorative, I tried to save some but it was impossible.
I then tidied up the garage, I relocated the pallets in the garden plus four pallets I’d scrounged from work that were in the back of my car. I salvaged the scrap oak from my fireplace mantel, set the tarps up and finally I rejigged the car with all the bits I’d taken out to scrounge the work pallets, this may sound the easy bit but I was quite knackered by then and wrestling baby seats into cars is a feat of some significance at the best of times.
I then headed off for a late lunch, this had taken hours, I was worn out and worried that I would get that back twinge, so I planned on a hot bath just to take the edge off.
Had a snacky lunch, did a week’s worth of washing up, emptied and hung up the clothes in the drier and then had a luxurious bath. Still not a twinge.
Typing now after doing a bit of banking, tidying, washing etc. and I reckon I’m not going to have a problem. I reckon I did twice the work I did last time I knackered my back, I also think that before I started today it was still a bit dodgy, but I expect the real saviour of the day was that weightlifting belt tightened to suspension bridge cable tautness and the simple act of not doing heroic log flinging, bending my knees and taking it all a bit slower.
Hmmm got a bank statement just before this, turns out I’m overdrawn so I’ve had to transfer some funds from my saving fund – the bit I had in reserve for the building work – so I’m not happy and it does make me feel somewhat worried that I’ll not be able to afford this gig.
Also yesterday on getting to work I got a call from the nice people at the Tesco card to tell me I was behind with my payments. I handled it all calmly and again paid using my saving account, this though was worrying as it could affect my credit worthiness and affect my ability to get more 0% cards in order to fund the project. I’m usually such a brilliant payer, I usually set up a direct debit immediately and that handles that, I can’t understand what happened this time. Still it’s paid, as long as I don’t have a black mark against my credit worthiness I’m quite happy.
This has all made me feel a bit vulnerable though.
There’s a festival in Barcelona that I’d kill to go to too and I know that I just cannot afford to go.
Sheesh.
Oh and this post is a little late, Sky internet has been up and down all day, I’ve just spent ages on the phone with no reply from Sky broadband support, I gave up when the phone timer hit 30 minutes to find that the internet was now mysteriously back on.