Philobiblon: Apologies

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Apologies

... if this blog is shaking slightly, and making a loud, dentist-drill-style noise. That's the council workmen downstairs making a thorough meal of demolishing a brick wall that is about 6m long and less than 2m high. Five of them, in a whole day yesterday, managed to demolish about a third of it, using a jackhammer with a brick-bolster-style attachment. Or at least one of them used that, one picked up each brick as it came off, and the others stood around and stereotypically leant on their brooms. It is windier today, so they are leaning into the doorways for shelter instead.

Give me a mid-size sledgehammer and crowbar and I'd have done it single-handed in a day. (OK, I'd be sore after, but then I spend most of my day swinging a keyboard.)

Council workmen are easy targets to take a swing at, and generally I try not to do that, but watching it at close hand is painful. (Not to mention in this case hard on the ears.)

3 Comments:

Blogger Natalie Bennett said...

O Clanger, I'm really glad I wasn't eating when reading that. Luckily it is too cold still for such wardrobes. Very luckily.

But thank you for explaining the important workflow issues that explain the need for five men. Perhaps the sixth man was off making tea whenever I walked past?

And I know all about the private sector, or rather the DIY sector. Being a builder's daughter I'm a dab hand with a sledgehammer... (Demolishing fibro is particularly satisfactory; sadly there doesn't seem to be much in the UK.)

3/28/2006 02:56:00 pm  
Blogger Natalie Bennett said...

Ah, I'm well up on asbestos, having recently purchased a flat that when I first walked into it with the estate agent was plastered with stickers saying "encased asbestos, do not disturb". (That might have had something to do with it being such a cheap central London flat, and with the agent chosing to hang around outside the front door, rather than show me around... Although he was the nervous sort; he also wouldn't get in the lift, preferring to walk up five flights of stairs.)

But being a builder's daughter I was not deterred (and part of the condition of purchase was that they clean it up).

And I have only demolished one wall since ...

3/28/2006 11:25:00 pm  
Blogger Alex said...

Fibro...I remember someone involved in an Australian scandal trying to handwave it off by saying "You know, I'm a fibro girl at heart.."

Not common in the UK, for the simple reason that it rains with wet water here.

3/30/2006 12:31:00 pm  

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