I kid you not! I now have the biggest garden shed I have ever seen in my garden. Not only is it massive but it's been built on a raised platform due the slope in my garden so it's massiveness is magnified ten fold, much to the obvious delight of the neighbours. During the erection process we kept getting glimpses of the lesbians peering through their blue plastic Ikea blinds and the dirty old goat from next door kept peeking over his windowsill in a manner that made him look even more like evil Bob from Twin Peaks.I daresay had these been normal circumstances the neighbours might have been up in arms about such a blight on the Croydon landscape. I mean our gardens are an ex-woodland so the appearance of what could be described as an bright orange Butlins Chalet might not have gone down too well. However the back garden could in no way have been described as 'normal' for the last 2 years. Not since my mate decided we needed more storage space and put up a Scouts marquee on the lawn!
Seemed like a good idea 2 summers ago and it was great for parties. Then gradually it got filled up with well.......................crap really. Then the foxes moved in and it was their turn to party in this purpose built foxy fun house with en-suite toilet. The stench of fox urine made your eyes water and piles of fox poo kept appearing in places that made you wonder how the hell the fox managed to get into such a position to drop one there. I'm sure they were using the storm lantern as a trapeze.
During the next 2 years rubbish builders came and went. Mostly went actually as they were all so unreliable that they would rarely appear on the day they were supposed to. They'd always drop by unexpectedly when your in the middle of a morning wank over some hunk's holiday snaps in OK magazine or the Torso of the Week in HEAT. Many a time I had to answer the door stooped over with an Argos catalogue covering my own personal marquee.
In the end we gave up on them and decided it shouldn't be too difficult to finish off the base ourselves. I mean how hard can it be to lay a concrete floor. Well very hard as we found out to our cost. Sand, water, gravel and 2 cold poofs is not an ideal combo. After 4 long hours of swishing around in this mess the surface had more bumps than the A3. We crawled back indoors, defeated and phoned the builders again.
Unbelievably they turned up and within a couple of days we had a flat deck for the shed.
The day of the erection arrived and whilst me and her from upstairs stood there trembling with fear at the thought of building this monstrosity. Mate was keeping us motivated by ordering us around and giving us encouragement by rolling his eyes and saying things like 'Don't touch that'!
In fact the whole thing went up very quickly and was very painless. Except when the ladders fell over while I was having a swig of tea and I spilled it all down my right arm.
It was fortunate that the erection was fast as we kept finding cat shit everywhere. We'd unearthed a cat toilet in the garden and the more we dug......the more stenching nuggets we uncovered. What is it with my garden that attracts the local wildlife to empty their bowels.
Skip's coming next weekend and the marquee will be no more. Maybe then the dog can get back in the garden again and oust the fouling felines and foxes. She needs to get her jobbies up there and reclaim her toilet.
Ok I'll keep you posted on the demise of the marquee next week and try not to do any more angry rant blogs in the meantime LOL ;-)
