Despite my optimism of yesterday, events conspired against
me working on ‘Minnow’. I had forgotten that one of our great grandsons would
be doing a sleep-in, and today he would require the full attention of my wife
and me. He is an engaging and extremely active boy – profusely inquisitive,
wanting to explore everything he sees by handling it and asking questions of
adults who must come up with answers.
One job that had to be done was fitting the remaining fence
panels into their support posts. My wife insisted that she would assist me in
doing it. My immediate neighbours were unavailable, so I accepted her
offer. The first panel went in well, but the second was marginally too wide at
the base. I was standing at the top of a step ladder; at the same time lifting
and guiding the panel into vertical slots down the sides of the support posts,
while my wife was lifting the panel from the base. Only then did we realize it
was too wide to fit between the slots. That was a dangerous moment, because one
of the lower corners of the panel was engaged into its appropriate slot, while
the other was balanced on top of the opposite post. The panel could have toppled
either way and perhaps have been damaged as a result of falling to the ground,
but more to the point, it could have knocked me clean off the ladder or bashed
my wife on the head! In that predicament we mustered enough strength to
disengage the panel and lower it to the ground without mishap.
I reshaped the base of the panel with a plane, and a second
attempt at putting it in place was successful, meanwhile our young visitor
played with his toy vacuum cleaner well away from the danger area.
The reinstallation of the garden panels necessitated cutting
down three small trees which left us with the problem of what to do with the
cuttings. The foliage I took to the Council recycling plant and I cut the
branches into small pieces to build a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Needless to say, our
tiny helper played his part by collecting twigs and placing them on Guy’s pyre.
Making his effigy will be fun.
That disposed of the morning.
For much of the afternoon we
were stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on the A130 to the south of Chelmsford.
After delivering items to a grandson we visited a toy shop and two other shops
of interest to my wife. Only then, could we return our young charge to his
father before returning home. Nightfall was soon upon us.
‘Minnow’ sulked all day.
