Friday, July 06, 2012

Man the Lifeboats

With an evil laugh our delivery bloke walked away, "Good luck moving them, they are going to tip over and you will probably break them all" he shouted over his shoulder. Gee, thanks for that, so yesterday we were left with five bags of sand, all with various holes in them skilfully designed to be hidden until you try and move them, one bag of cement and eighteen 600mm x 600mm paving slabs, each one weighing the same as a small horse. To make matters worse it was placed on two pallets with the slabs hanging off one end on a sloping drive. Sigh.

Mr delivery driver was one of the uncheery fellows that delight in giving the minimum of service with the maximum of comments, don't you just hate that? I paid for delivery not a comedian although looking at the precarious balancing act of slab and pallets he obviously thought I was a magician. He had even 'thoughfully' cut the plastic tie around them all rendering the first few loose potential toe crushers as you approached and the rest balancing domino style ready to go at any moment.

Right Mr delivery man I won't let you get the better of me I thought and set to working out a plan of action. Due to their elevated position if they did topple they really would topple so I needed some kind of slab stopper. At the back I wedged a piece of timber against it weighted down with a few bags of sand. Against the other side I piled the remaining three. The idea was to remove one slab at a time then push the sand closer to the remaining ones to avoid a topple and a comedy home accident moment. Here goes...

...and you know it actually worked, the stack toppled terribly half way through but a steady hand from Jayne and a repositioning of the sand bags worked a treat. Still took us the best part of an hour to move them all onto the garden but at least they are all now in place ready to be laid. It was about then the heavens opened with a loud crack of thunder and the great deluge began, wish I had ordered wood for an ark instead, although with hindsight Mr delivery driver would have constructed some weird see-saw contraption out of the delivery that would have resulted in some Tom and Jerry like accident no doubt.

Even as I write this the next day it's still raining, the green house was washed away late last night, Bunnyopolis was last seen floating past Milton Keynes manned by three bunnies in striped deck wear and the upturned table I'm now sat on has started taking in water, although York is nice and I did get chance to wave to a few people as I floated by.

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