Home for the Bewildered

We've all been amazed at the speed that the Home for the Bewildered, is going up out the back, and by the design. I suppose we'd all thought it would be some kind of timber "framed" building, and had visions of some kind of impressive "Grand designs" stylee structure.

Timber it is (well "wood" anyway - the word "timber" evokes big baulks of oak and planks, like S.B. Cambria is getting; these are more like flat-pack mdf sheets with window holes cut in them) we guess.

Starting with a beeeeeg concrete base the boys have used the huge crane to swing these flat pack sheets into place, some orientated North-south, some east-west, nailing them together with a big hand held nail-gun where they touch. In this way they've whizzed up a single storey looking for all the world like a house of cards, each sheet relying on all the rest to stay upright.

Across the top of this went an array of on-edge planks to form the ceiling joists, and then, perpendicular, more planks laid flat to form the floor of the 2nd storey, again, with blokes running about like a swarm of ants with nail guns ("Ptoof - ptoof - ptoof" all day long).

Next a repeat of the ground floor - more north-south and east-west sheets, and at that point they stopped (we know not why). Mum is un-impressed by the (lack of) sturdiness of it all. The walls are so thin, says she, that if one of the old girls coughs in one room (I think it was "coughs") they'll hear her 4 rooms away.

Suddenly we have a 2 storey building 30 feet from our back fence (in places), and we are pleased that the Paulownia is so tall, the ash and scots pine doing their bit, and happy at our decision not to manicure the beech hedge. The beech is rapidly turning into a row of trees, and giving useful cover from being suddenly overlooked.

They do squeeze 'em in on these modern sites, do they not. We know we've been spoiled. When Meg and Haggis were pups, there was a massive fruit packhouse on that site, chilled HGV's a-rattling, forklifts tearing up and down with their tines a-clanging when they were unladen, as they hit the expansion joints and drainage gulleys in the concrete yard.

Then about 5 years ago it was all pulled down and we've all enjoyed having waste-ground behind us as far as the railway line (850 feet away) - foxes, pheasants, rabbits, wild flowers, birds. Now suddenly, bam!, and we are back in town.

Ah well

Deefer