To me, to you

I am so, so sorry...

I read a couple of my recent Blog posts over the weekend... Aren't they long-winded?

I wander about all over the place (figuratively that is... If I wandered very far, I wouldn't be able to reach the keyboard, and you'd be denied the new, improved, edited me.) don't I?

I'm going to break one of my own unwritten rules here.  I only usually Blog about things what have happened in the dim and distany past, well, at least the previous year, usually.

But I've had a bit of a funny weekend (Good funny, not bad funny) and thought you might like to hear about it.

I've got this mate, the same mate who I was discussing bucket lists with, who does the whole 'Dig for Victory' / Good Life, allotment thing.  And seeing as I live but a hop, skip and a jump away from his house, I occasionally get a phone call (or, more likely, his wife corners Mrs Dandy in a dark alley and threatens her with a haddock until she offers my services.) saying something like:

'Dandy! I've 'found' an unattended greenhouse in someone's garden, it looks a bit disused - I think they're on holiday, bring the van'

or

'Can carrots be poisonous? We've had a glut, so it's all we've eaten for the past month... And the baby might have gone a bit orange!'

But this particular event started with what was billed as a 'Shed moving party'.  There was to be beer, barbecue and buggering about with garden buildings.  Now, on the day, we arrived a little bit late and missed most of the 'clearing the shed out' phase, which was nice.  I commented on just how much stuff (Well, I may have used the word crap) you could fit in an 8' x 6' shed.  Looking inside however, I realised that there was still a bit of clearance that needed doing, but it was all of the 'Been sitting there for months, on bare soil, covered in snails and spiders' stuff - and his bike - Well, his bike minus the engine, which was in one of his other sheds.  So we ejected the rest of the contents via the medium of chucking them on a big pile whilst going 'Eww-ewww-ewww!' and wiping my slimy / cobwebby hands on my good jeans.

So, we had a strategy meeting, (can of lager) trying to decide the best way to progress the project... There were three of us, and the shed was held down by a mixture of gravity, mud and bloodymindedness - Of course, we decide to just pick it up and move it.

I don't know if you've ever tried to move one of these made of tin plate, bought off the Internet, home assembles with only an allen key and a toffee hammer, garden erections but they're characterised by a few interesting features:

1. Every single exposed metal edge is razor sharp - So sharp that if you hold your breath whilst you're inside one, you can hear a gentle buzz as oxygen molecules are sliced in half as they waft across them.
2. There is nothing to hold on to - not a single thing - except the exposed edges (See above)
3. The metal that it's made of has the tensile strength of a wet dog-fart, I actually put my hand through the wall at one stage (and it wasn't rusty, I just leaned on the wall, and suddenly my hand was outside)
4. If you try and fashion hand-holds from stout rope, wherever you tie the rope to will fold up like a four-hour, made to measure Taiwanese suit (See above)

I'd like to point out at this moment, the non-combatants - i.e. the women and children, were sat at the other end of the garden offering encouragement, and definitely not jeering... At all... Much.

Our first 'lift' took the shed a total of eighteen inches before it slipped out of our hands... So we had another strategy meeting, and decided that it was Mother Nature's fault that we were failing in our appointed task - In that she had caused an apple tree to grow in the one place where we desperately needed there not to be an apple tree.  Unfortunately we were warned by my good friend's wife that there would be consequences if said tree was to be damaged.

This required thought... So we thought... Then thought some more... And an idea came to us - We decided that if we couldn't pick it up, we should roll it end over end.
So we gave that a go, very, very, briefly - We then spent a few moments bending and pulling at the shed to make it look a little bit more shedlike and a little less like Dorothy's house after the tornado.

Then we had another strategy meeting... Which ended with us deciding to shout 'buggrit' pick the bloody thing up and throw it roughly in the right direction... which we sort of did, quickly followed by further few moments of straightening of walls and roof beams.

Then we spotted that the gap it was going into wasn't big enough for it, because there was one of those Pampas Grass boles in the way - So, we had another strategy meeting and decided that what we needed to do was find the sharpest things we could and hack about at the grass until the shed just 'fit'

This degenerated into a hatchet throwing competition... Which I lost, but the apple tree that has caused us the trouble earlier on won (Won in this case characterised by it remaining standing and relatively unscathed)

We manhandled the shed into the gap mostly by swearing at it, swore at it some more until the walls were all straight and then all looked at each other trying to remember what we'd done with the doors (that we'd taken off in an effort to make it lighter)

This wasn't assisted by the two hour strategy meeting we had to celebrate...

So, if you want anything moving around in your garden, give us a call - Just make sure to get a couple of cases of strategy in, just for emergencies like...