Swimming in concrete

Work has begun again on the shed...

This week we have had a moat dug out, one metre deep, all the way round the shed. Work began on Thursday and when the guy with the digger came back on Friday his first thought was to check that we were still standing and that the shed had not become a lean-to over night. It was slightly disconcerting when the bucket of the digger scrapped along one of the walls a bit of wallpaper - well, wall really - fell off in the bedroom.

As the digger man and J had been digging the trench at one point they thought that they may have hit a main drain as so much water gushed out from under the house. About 5 minutes later when the water had finally subsided it became apparent that this was all the water that had been trapped under the Shed. We have effectively been floating here for the past year.

The concrete arrived on the Friday and three loads were gushed into the moat. Poor old J was up to his knees in it making it all level out and so I decided that the nicest thing I could do was offer a good workman a cup of tea. On opening the back door the dogs bolted for a run and fell straight into a metre of concrete...

Hen tried to swim in it and in a panic Dot then joined him. Thankfully the two digger men helped me pull them out and then I had to spend the next half an hour hosing and then bathing them clean. I have to point out that this was no mean feat as having to lift a five stone dog covered in concrete into a bath when he has absolutely zero desire to play ball is quite an struggle.

Mother of invention this week...as the concrete had to be poured right round the house the pipe work for the bath had to be removed. This meant that I could fill a bath and not empty it. Once I had washed 2 cement ridden dogs into the bath you can imagine what the water and bath looked like. So I wanted a bath...I got the washing up bucket and for 15 mins loaded the water out of the bath and into the only piped in basin to flush it away. I then mopped up the rest of the water with a cloth and wrung it out. I then scrapped all of the remaining concrete out of the bath. I then cleaned the bath and underwent the same washing up bucket labour to rinse it. Half and hour after beginning this...I got a stinking hot bath! It is not just J who works things out here you know!