A Mixed Bag of a week or two

The end of the Pool Saga!

I finished at 01:00 thinking I'd done 99% of the job and here I am at o6:30 next morning still deconstructing (Derrida where art thou?). Finally finished at 11:00 which means that it took me about 7.5 hours to pull it apart. I don't think that it took me that long to put it together. Still it's all in the back of the LR and will shortly be at Cait's.

A Bloody Great Hole!

A 21 tonne excavator operated by Daniel who looks about 19 is working along side me but his progress is fantastic. At the end of the day there's a pad for the house and a trench for the footing for the retaining wall. Before he's finished for the day Daniel relocates several truck loads of soil to create a berm along the HK road boundary. In two hours he's done about 10 times what i've done in two days with the Kubota and saved me about two weeks of effort.

What Drives this woman?

We have lived here for a bit over 15 years and during all that time one of our next door neighbours whilst constantly claiming to want to be a good neighbour has seemingly made it her business to make our lives a misery. Her dog has killed our chooks. She has complained about the blackberry which has grown along our common fence whilst having acres of blackberry of her own which has gone unchecked since her husband died a few years ago. Her inability to maintain a clear area along our common boundary made a significant contribution to the loss of our house. Through all this and much more I have steadfastly maintained that tolerance and understanding will eventually overcome her territorial demands. Most recently I have been keeping an eye on her place and checking that anybody on the property is entitled to be there. I have also offered to cut down the dead trees adjacent to our boundary and arrange for our local CFA to supervise it's burning. This offer was declined.

And to the point of this. Recently seeing that she was on site and having lost the details of Blaze aid fencing contractor which she wanted to use I approached and asked if she could again provide the information as I had found a supplier of second hand pine poles and wanted to know how many would be required. She agreed to provide this and then said that she had recently seen a copy of my business card and was I intending to run a business. I said yes, forbearing to mention that I have been running a business from home for about 5 years and wondering where this was going. Ever optimistic I thought initially that she might be interested in my Garden design consultancy but soon learned that she was actually concerned about how many clients I might have and where they would park. As we were standing in the government road which provides access to three properties I suggested that they could park pretty much where they liked provided they did not block access to our respective private access roads. She continued this line of questioning and asked agin whereabouts they would park to which I responded that if necessary they would park in an appropriate area which I would provide.

Her response was that she had moved to the country for peace and quiet and I was about to spoil it all, presumably with all the traffic and visitors I might attract. I remind the reader that my business Little Wood Consulting is a Garden Design Consultancy. I should be so lucky as to have three people a week turn up! I was absolutely gobsmacked and when she repeated her assertion that I would spoil the peace and quiet of her country existence, I said "... that is crap! I'm out of here and turning on my heel I walked away seething.

I am completely over this woman and for only the third time in my life have decided that she is a person with whom I wish to have absolutely minimum contact and preferably none! I simply do not understand what drives her but I am reminded of one of the several interactions between Mr Winston Churchill and Lady Astor in which Lady Astor says. "If you were my husband, I'd poison you" to which Winston replies, "And If I were your husband, I'd happily take it!"

A Bit of a Panic!

On Sunday I was moving crusher dust from the delivery piles to the tank pad that Sean had cleared for me when I decided to check the diameter. I was a bit surprised to find that it was about a metre short of the 10.1 m required. Monday was spent rectifying this and by nearly 6:00 pm I'd done and had enough. The level wasn't too bad but I thought it probably wasn't as good as the installers would require so I called my friend Richard a landscape architect and asked if he could give me a hand with the levels the following day. He agreed to bring up his laser level the following morning which I thought would give me a day to rectify any misalignment.

Panic set in when I called the tank supplier to ask for an extra day and discovered that I was two days out and the installation team was on route. Richard arrived at almost exactly the same and instead of having time for "white with two sugar" was immediately cast in the role of levelling supervisor as I shaved and moved and crusher dust from one area to another. I guess it could have been a disaster but in fact he did a terrific job and with the levels set he departed coffee-less to his next appointment while the tank construction team got on with the job.

It looks terrific and I am most grateful to Richard and the boys from STS Tanks.