Paving

On Monday afternoon, a big truck arrived from Wickes - the DIY/Builders' Store. I jumped in the cab with the friendly driver - let's call him Humphrey - and directed him round the back of our house where there's a little private lane. Unfortunately, because of overhanging bushes and trees and the sheer size of the truck, Humphrey was unable to back his vehicle far up the lane so expertly, using his heavy duty crane, he swung my items round the back of the truck and drove off. I was left with a massive bag of pea gravel and a palette of thirty paving slabs.

Using a builder's wheelbarrow I had borrowed, I made over thirty trips back and forth to make sure that the gravel and the the paving stones were safely in our garden before nightfall. I was sweating like a Finn in a sauna.

Last weekend I had laboriously dug out a channel for our new garden path - transporting barrowload after barrowload of earth to the dumping ground. On Tuesday, the path laying commenced but it was rained off on Wednesday. It was mainly about levelling. I also had to use an angle grinder to slice a couple of the slabs. Can you picture me - safety goggles and green ear protectors and a tea towel tied round my face to prevent inhalation of concrete dust.

At one point, above the channel I had previously excavated, I seem to have unearthed some of the corrugated remains of a World War II Anderson Shelter. Digging this out was no joke.

Anyway, come Thursday evening I had laid twenty eight slabs - all butted up together and pretty much level, laid on a bed of pea gravel that I had compressed with my new "rammer" (see right) - what a beautifully simple DIY tool! I wonder who invented it. Probably a caveman in the year dot.

The path is not quite finished but I am getting there and you know - I have enjoyed every minute of this job - the planning and estimation, the heavy lifting, the sweat, feeling physically tired and seeing my twenty metre path growing slab by slab. This has felt like real work - so different from burning the midnight oil to correct English exercise books or waxing lyrical about Seamus Heaney. As I make it, I wonder how long my path will last. Some time in the future - perhaps fifty years from now - will there be a guy up our garden digging up my slabs and marvelling at my workmanship - "They don't make paths like they used to!"