Day Four: Unscheduled hole

On Fridays I look after little Jojo, so I was thinking it would be a good idea to be out of the house as much as possible while all the work is going on. After the school coffee morning in aid of Macmillan (Josie biscuit tally = 6), I decided to head into town and make sure that all the shops were still there. Fairly sure I saw the boss's car parked on Level One of the Oracle, but I'm sure that would be a meeting with e.g. Reading Council rather than an early raid on the shops!! After a bimble round Primark (damage = a sweater, a T-Shirt, and seven pairs of knickers for Millie), and a trip to Fabricland for haberdashery, we headed over to Tesco later than usual and got the weekly shop in. Fortunately Josie was still too stuffed from all her coffee morning biscuits to make much of a demand for food as we went round.

Back at the house and the most consistently present of the builders (I have been introduced to them all by name, but I haven't a clue which one this is) was practically finished digging out the foundations. To say that Jo was thrilled to bits with him is putting it mildly. Currently we have a glass door in the dining room right next to where the footings are being dug, which made an excellent vantage point for Jojo to observe what he was doing without plopping straight into the hole.

As I was surveying the site from behind Jo I noticed that a rather lovely Victorian pipe runs through the hole right be the dining room, and I also noted that there is a 6 inch diameter hole in the pipe. "Oh well, I thought to myself, that was probably there already". Alas apparently not. According to the builder guy they had looked at it and been unable to see what it might serve, tso had commenced hacking into it, only to look (I imagined wistfully) up and realise that the guttering runs straight into the ground not two feet away... could THAT be what the pipe is for? Could it? Why probably yes. So we may be looking at needing to replace that pipe. I say we I mean Gavin and his team.

Consistent builder knocked on the door at about two-ish, just after site manager Josie had been prised away from the door and put down for her nap, and informed me he'd done as much as he could so was heading off, although a mate might be back later to look at the pipe of woe. Sure enough whilst I was busy tinkling the ivories, someone else did show up, but I was in the middle of murdering some poor defenceless tune so couldn't be bothered to try and ask technical questions.

So now I'm feeling all Capability Brown, as we effectively have a Ha-Ha all around the back of our house, although to be fair it is posing no difficulty at all to the livestock, both cats leaping disdainfully across it to lay their commemorative logs of disapproval in the newly turned earth.

Our cats nearly caused the builders we had in at Carnarvon Road to quit the site as they persisted in leaving little "presents" in the piles of dust etc involved in the build.

So I guess that is it now until Monday - do builders work on weekends? I don't know... We'll be spending the next two days trying to prevent Millie and Josie from plunging headfirst into the crevasse...

Today's photos

See pipe? See hole?

Socks returning from one of her ablutionary expeditions

The Ha-Ha, and now I notice it, Socks heading off for one of her ablutionary missions.