La Vie En Rose: Toys and Tribulations

Timeline: Friday 4 May. We have two new toys on the premises right now. I arrived back from the UK after a long wet drive in my open top classic last Saturday. I returned to the UK with my pal Alistair, a week ago, as I had a dental appointment and wanted to get my TR3 back on the road and return with it to France.

It looked as if it wasn’t raining from the ferry, as it docked at Ouistreham, but found it drizzling as I drove off and got a mischievous grin from the customs man, who must have heard that weather forecast I missed. The beauty of an open top sports car in the rain, is that so long as you make reasonable forward progress, any rain simply goes whoosh, right over your head and you stay reasonably dry and comfy whilst enjoying the pleasure of being at one with the environment.

One drawback however with being that close to a wet environment on a busy motorway, is the tendency for spray getting behind the windscreen, so you’re constantly using an increasingly soggier gloved hand to wipe the inside of the windscreen, your instruments and the satav screen, while the water collecting on your hat and collar eventually finds a way past your scarf and down your neck. By the time you decide that you’d be better off with the roof up . . . and environmental conditions need to be devastatingly noxious for me to do that (or the bride sat in the passenger seat!) then you realise that unless you can stop somewhere undercover, the time it takes to extract the hood from the boot, erect if and fasten all those poppers and catches with cold wet fingers, then all of you, rather than just the upper part, will need wringing dry through a mangle.

So continuing on without stopping meant I got home an hour earlier than expected and Paul hearing the exhaust roar as I approached, soon had the gates open and I slid the Rocket into the joinery workshop, alongside the bride’s Beetle.

Toy number one, safely home after a fabulous and memorable drive.

Extra points bonus: Paul is now referring to the building previously known to him as the ‘joinery shop’, now solely as the workshop!

One of our adventures Alistair and I had was to wander off into the wilds in search of a mini digger whose enterprising owner had advertised for hire in a local builder’s merchants. The guy turned out to be a self proclaimed impoverished farmer, but his hire and delivery charges went far beyond our budget expectations, so we took up a recommendation from the boss of the metal fabricators in our village and went to talk to the nice people at MGAV. ‘It’s just off the giraffe roundabout near Doue’ were the instructions and fortunately, my local knowledge got us there in 10 minutes.

Alistair, a canny man, when asked how long we might need the digger, suggested 2 days from Friday 4^th, ‘and you’ll collect it when, Monday morning?’ he innocently asked. The nice man smiled and then winked as he said that was okay and it would give us a little more flexibility! Not bad, buy two, get one free.

So Thursday evening saw this little gem below, delivered for our enjoyment for a few days.

Toy number two, shiny clean and eager to please,

Was content to let a delighted Mr Beast sit at his ease,

Exercising his long remembered plant driver skill,

Made rock encrusted ground, bend to his will.

‘The first cut is the deepest’ . . . not in drainage digging it’s not Rod!

Progress was rapid and just like using a concrete mixer over a bucket and spade, you’d never really want to ever go back to digging just by hand again if you could help it. To put this into context, what had taken me a day and a quarter to dig by hand the previous month when hooking up the new bathrooms, was completed in just 30 minutes.

A concern, well a worry really, was whether we would disturb the cellars when digging the drains over them. I’d tried to keep as much trench clear of this area, but some still remained and although I’d carefully measured the ground depth above the cellar ceiling as well as could be, real concern remained. That concern showed on both our faces, as Paul shaved slivers at a time from the bottom of the trench, with me keeping a close eye on the excavation. When safely past the cellars, I went down with my torch for an inspection and came back five minutes later wearing a happy face. Everything just as it should be.

Satisfied that risk of danger had passed, I set off to buy some more drain fittings and some food. After shopping, sat in the car outside the supermarket watching the rain pour down, I thought I’d drive a bit further to pick up another cast iron manhole cover, by which time the rain might ease, so I wouldn’t get too wet. The rain did fortunately ease and I felt happier for Paul on the digger. The sky had a particularly translucent quality with a distinctly deep darkness creeping over the horizon. The next instant, the whole of the visible sky was streaked through with forked lightening and 60 seconds after that, the traffic was reduced to a crawl, as the road struggled with the flash flood.

Meanwhile, Paul was having an interesting time, as trenches filled to the top with water and he had to dig a sump in order to carry on with the trenches. The sun was shining and the clouds gone by the time I returned home and we had to just take a minute and laugh at the situation. I remembered much later, how very grateful I was that the integrity of the cellars was intact!

Despite the downpour, by the end of the day, almost all the drain trenches were dug.

The next morning, the courtyard looked more like a scene from a Great War film set . . . nothing but mud and trenches and we began to grade the falls, lay and joint pipes. Manhole sections were concreted in, channels cut, fixed and benched and the sections under vehicle routes concreted over. The end of the day saw a remarkable difference, but we still had to fill in the excavations and form that important final manhole which was to be joined up to the town sewer in a week's time.

Sunday was our ‘flexibility’ day with the mini-pel and we started filling and compacting the trenches, but it became evident that we’d need it for a bit longer and as Paul was returning to Malta for a well earned rest at the end of the week, I was pleased to be able to keep it for another day and a half.

The rain never ever totally left us and we continued working long and hard days to get through this essential part of the build. After showering at the end of our days, and eating a meal, we both fell into our beds to repeat the process the next day. We were both getting very tired and Paul was suffering from painfully swollen knees, but thankfully we had completed all we needed to and had an easier couple of days of lighter inside duties. The weather decided to laugh at us now by being bright and sunny, but we had overcome all challenges, not to mention Mr B working past the pain barrier! It had been hard, dirty and sometimes frustrating work, leaving us cold, wet, but not miserable. Was it emotional though? Well it wasn’t exactly fun, but well worth the effort and we will look back on the five days with smiles on our faces.