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I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.

Those odd jobs


Have you ever put off those jobs that you know should be done before things get too bad? You know the sort of thing, that loose kitchen shelf that your wife has been nagging you for ages to fix, so that she can put all her pots and pans back up onto it. Of course you tell her that it's on your 'to do' list, whenever you get the chance, it's just that you never seem to find the time. Then, as time goes by, your 'to do' list grows longer, and before you know it, your wife has made a list that appears on the fridge door with all the jobs listed in the order that she wants them done. Of course, by the time that happens you just know that all the excuses you have used in the past are not going to work any more, and it's time to get the tool box out, and miss your favourite Saturday TV sports program and get on with them.

Of course, in my case, it does not have to be on a weekend. As many of you already know, we are both disabled, so we are both at home all the time. So it was that we decided to build a new fence in our back garden, with the idea being that it would hide that jungle of a garden that our neighbour has, as well as giving us more privacy. The carrot on the end of the stick being was that my wife would then be able to go into our back garden more often, as even after I had built the summer house for her a few years ago, she never ventured out into the garden much at all. Now the first thing we thought about was the cost, so with that in mind we visited a local DIY store to gain an idea of the cost, which we discovered was going to be way above what we could afford. Then my wife remembered that one of her many sisters was married to a bloke who had his own landscape business, and we could buy the timber through his business account. It was just as well we did, as that cut the cost right down, that along with the fact that he had a stack of old timber fencing in his yard. However, this still required transporting and cutting down to size, as they were all nine feet tall and eight feet long, and most of them had been damaged while being taken down.

It was a couple of days later when our brother-in-law arrived with enough sections to cover the 42 feet we required, and they were stacked up at the back of our house. Now, we both knew that I could not do the work as my back injury simply would not be up to it, but our lads, (my wife's two sons from her previous marriage) were both fit strong youngsters, who, although they had never done such a job, said they would take on the work with my supervision. It took us two days of work just to make up the sections by reclaiming the best of the timber we had, and cutting it down to size. Those tools that I had in the shed, that my wife said I would never use, were all put to use. I must admit that after I had shown the lads how to use the power tools, I could see that they were actually enjoying what they were doing, and in fact taking pride in doing it, as they had never done any DIY or used tools much in the past. The whole job was a team effort, and with this quick-drying post concrete that you can get these days, meant that we could actually screw the fence panels to the posts the same day.

It was a great feeling we all had when it was finished. The lads had worked hard to dig the holes alone, and one of them was a lot harder as the post ended up right next to the clothes pole, which was already set in a large block of concrete. The lads had to break some of it away in order to dig the hole for the post. Our garden feels a lot more secluded now, and I think that my wife might come out and use it more in future, which was the whole idea in the first place. We had some fence section timber left over which I thought would come in handy for some other job in the future. Little did I know that it would be the next day! I had gone into the tin shed we'd bought and built up when my wife was given her electric scooter, to check the battery level. There was a dip in the floor that I had noticed a few weeks earlier, so I placed a thick board over it, thinking it was one of the straps on the two large pallets that I had put down to act as base to build it on, and thought no more about it. Yet as I went in, I accidentally kicked that board, and put my foot on the dip that it had been covering, only to put my foot right through the floor! Then when I removed my foot and checked, I discovered that the rain had been seeping in under the doors of the shed, and had rotted away at least half of the floor area. So, it looks like I have yet another job on my hands. I will phone the lads tomorrow: just as well they had the practice, eh!

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