clurb.net

We failed, wholly and unreservedly, this weekend to do anything with the house proper. The Manchester United room still needs another coat of paint, and the kitchen still looks like a bomb’s dropped on it. We haven’t even thought about a plasterer properly yet. Living out of the conservatory is working well so far, but I have the feeling it’s going to start grating after another six or seven weeks.

We did crack on with the garden though. Pee spent about five minutes having another go at one of the tree stumps with special equipment brought home from work. Special durable, heavy-weight, manly equipment. Which broke. After that we started sorting through the piles of crap which had mysteriously accumulated over the tenure of the previous occupants. After a full van-load of rubble was dumped at the tip we came back and had a really good fire.

It was big and hot and marvellous. And we cooked jacket potatoes in it and ate them all slavered with butter and National Cheese. It took about three hours to get rid of one of the old sheds and a pile of old wood bits from the house, as well as a few armfuls of dead green matter I’d raked up from the bottom of the garden the previous weekend.

We carried on the good work on Sunday too with another couple of trips to the tip. All in all this weekend, we’ve got rid of:
– 1 shed
– 2 vanloads of rubble and hardcore
– 1 vanload of wood, branches and tree-trunks
– 1 huge, muddy, balled-up mess of decades-old plastic sheeting
– 3 bin bags of general rubbish (including a thong, two odd shoes, a set of cutlery, a Durex wrapper, and a variety of sweety bags)

It’s been a cleansing experience. There’s another two vanloads of rubble to get rid of yet, and I’d say another three or four bin bags full of rubbish to clear out. A couple more vanloads of tree trunks, and a huge great pile of leafy bits and twigs to go. Then we’ll be able to see what our garden looks like.