Metamorphosis and Assimilation


  (Still)


Awful's note:

   This page was originally intended for the edumification of Sheddi, but since somehow it has creapded crept into the public domain, the public will have to put up with the quaintness of the speeling. (Ed.)

Now read on. ("If you dare!" Ed.)


Beside the house and down the loke about a hundred yards further there lurked an old garage. It was not a pretty sight.


   It was a wicketty-wacketty woofless garage, widdled with woodworm and wife with wot, but there were sufficient uncrumbly bits of it to be of some interest to the wheely serious jobbing bodger, and when the new owner of the plot on which it wilted announced his detention of bearking it up and burning it, this jobbing bodger pounced, with serious bodging aforethought.

   Accordingly, the structure was dismantled with as much care as could be expected under the circumferences: viz., the knuts and blots holding the sections together and to the concrete base were frimly wedled with rust, which called for the wielding of thrid hands, hacksores, spaniels, clod chisels, crewbars, and a certain amount of ligniperdous exertion, wot molished some of the sections sort-of somewhat bendy in the miggle.

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Let us travel back to the bodgery in my Tardis...  No: that isn't my Tardis, that's the back half of the shed The previous inhabitants had unmolished the front half of it for some reason, probably connected with dilapidation, or to be precise, dilumpidation, since the shed originally was builded of clay lump. To prevent the contents from walking off during the night a wall was molished from - shock-horror! - flettons. (Paws to regain composture. Ed.)    For those not in the know, clay lump is a building material much used in East Angular, and was exceedingly inexpensive, and so long as it was kept dry, exceedingly effective. An area of ground was stripped of its topsoil, exposing the clay beneath. Water, chopped straw and fresh cowdung were sploofed on the clay and a heavy horse walked round and round on it, until it had been pugged into a sticky mess the constituency of clod porage.    The sticky mess was shovelled into long square-section troughs with dividing boards the length of them, and one of the sides removable, dividing them into standard-sized blockholes, so to speak. The gunge was tamped in with a flat-headed plonker and left to dry a bit. ("Often referred to in Norfolkese as 'a fule'." Ed.) When the blocks had hardened enough, the sides of the moulds were removed and the damp blocks tipped out and stacked loosely under cover to dry.    To the left of the shed you will just molish out another door, back amongst the hedge. This is the netty, thunderbox, privy, or whatever you wish to call it. It is NOT the bathroom. Per-lease! The sheet of something-or-other in the foreground covers a hole in which I found bwicks and bits of wubble. I was prematurely excited by the find, gooving that I'd found a filled-in well. Alas! (And a lack) It was not to be so: the well which had served the four cottijis is berried beneath next-door's eggs ten shun. (Stamps foot)    Anyway, back to the Sirius business of molishing clay lumpenstuff: more cow-dung, water and chopped straw were flung into the claypit, and the horse wound-up and started off again. This must have been boring for the horse, and it would have been much kinder to use something with a shorter span of attention, such as a glodfish, but glodfish haven't got big enough feet innit.    And so-on, until there were enough blocks to build the house and a big enough hole to float a small freighter. In the clay-covered areas of East Angular, ponds are usually called pits - mainly because that is what they are.

Here I shall have to insert a load of waffle in order to move the right column over. I'll put something apposite opposite the other side as soon as I can goove of anything.    Hmmmm. Text just gets squished into a skinny space fit for planting a flagpole, or a pic of me, sideways.    The way things are going, it looks as if it will have to be something big, like another pic of the Tardi^H^H^H^shed... ...is this any betterer?    There are plans afoot to put an orange-juice bockle on top of the conservative, and for any dismissive individuals who might say "So what?", all I can say is that you haven't seen the orange -juice bockle.    Yet.    Never mind, you will. Be assured of that, you will. But let's keep to the matter in hand, shall we? The trouble with molishing columns in wibblespace is that you have to fill them or you has a nasty lump of nothing at the top of them, and a useless bit of empty space underneath innit.    I suppose I could always look for another pitcher and pour that in. (Thinks) "What might add a bit of interest? I don't think I have any pics of Lillian Gish I want to share with you, and Hattie Jaques won't fit. I know! ..."    How's this?    The black plastic is covering the Rayburn which will one day grace the kitching, but first I have to molish a big quarry in the chimblybeast innit.

   Where was I? Ah yes. I had the idea that there might be enough bits of garage to extend the shed to its former size, if not its former solid glory. Accordingly, I reassembled the best bits...


   The black thing in the background is a polythene orange-juice bottle which will be put somewhere later, where it will collect filtered rainwater. The long thing leaning on it is the bit of wood intended for the ridge of the shed's roof.

   To prevent the ramshackle structure falling over, a lean-to was planned, and as luck would have it, a friend was demolishing his old shed, having constructed a palatial replacement. The serviceable parts found their way to the Bodgery, and some of the smaller bits of ply were pressed into service in the construction of the lean-to.

      

   The lean-to is quite useful, as it stops the shed from falling over into a complex shape beloved of Sheddi and other fanciers of old structures suitable for filling with elderly sofas, mangles, mincers, flower potses, jam-jars with adherent hardened paint brushes, tobacco tins, sacks of hardened cement and all the paraffin alia of escape from domesticity - wot are a sort-of cross between doom and a city - where was I? Oh yes, that complex shape, which would be rectangular at the back and sort-of like paralellogramophonic at the fromt, TAAAW it can be put to use as a store for firewood, non-firewood, bicycles, and other hardy tqt.



   As luck would have it, a house down the road was being gutted and renovated, and all the copper pipework and a lot of thermalite part-blocks found their way back here, followed a little later by some of the wood which was stripped out, and the roof beams from the brick-built shed, the bricks of which were used for some of the work on the house. I cut these beams to size and since they had been a secure home to wood-boring beetle for rather longer than I would have liked, I treated them to a liberal application of Creomite. ("Look for /dick.htm or find the Lexicon in tqt.htm" - Ed.) They can be seen stacked against the front of the shed under the top hinge of the left-hand door in the second picture above. Since the pics were taken today, (28^th July 2004) you'll have to contain your excitement until laterer. I've no doubt that progress will be made tomorrow, as I can't sit around all day listening to the test match.

   "Why not?" (Ed.)

            

More later...

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Laterer

(29^thJuly 2004)

            

   The jutty-outey bit at the front will carry four-or-so feet of extended roof, so that when the doors are open the shelter will be extended effectively by that much, and might support beneath the front end a pretty lantern to attract moffs in the night, as well as more romantically-minded members of the unfair sex.

   "On second thoughts, I won't clartify the ambiguititty..." (Ed.)

   This is solely for Mr. Wind to play with, in the hope that he will leave my lemming trees alone if I give him something else to do.

                      

   The widow you can see through the timbers is that of my study. I can get up, look out, and wonder WTH I'm gooving of, innit. The greenery at the top of the ladder is a woodle troff with bags of peat in. One has a crop of watercress, the other, chives. The building under the troff(s) is the ablooshuns block, wherein are bath, wish-handmaiden and netty. Other troffs contain strawbellies, small citrus trees, and decorative plants TAAAW.    Since the roof is too flat, and water builds up there after rian, there are a narrer strip of crapit wot sokes it up and droops it into the gutter. I'm gooving of pwtting down some old crapet, laying Pete on top, covering that wiv fine plarstick netting and planting grass there.

   OTOH, it might not be a gud idea, so I have installed a thin siphon tube at the far corner, where gather the restless waters of the deep. After a Shah or a more prolonged period of precipitation, I can give the dingly-dangly end of the tube a brief sook, and conveniently it waters a decorative stand (or do I mean 'climb'?) of runner beans wot stagger up the corner of the abushuns, with the help of raffia and knotted tealeaves, etc..

   That concludes the business for the 29^th

   More jbex has been carried out in the meantime, but you'll have to take my worm for that. Today is the second of August (not West), and sheets of pre-loved ply which were lying up against the ablutions block have been cut about where necescelery and nialed on to the rough beams to represent a roughcovering.

   There were some outstanding gaps between pieces of sheet, and these served to illuminate the inferior nicely: but that wasn't the idea, so planks from a pallet have been cut to fit between the timbers, and the ply screwed down on them. Then some filler was scraped in and grudgingly permitted to dry.

   I unforgot that my neighbour had given me a tub of half-full wood treatment, but I'm not sure if the wood or the treatment are half full, or, if I'm feeling a pessimist, half empty. Sloshed a load of that on one side of the rough, but the other side will have to wait until I've filled all the cracks, holes, etc.

   I am looking forward to getting felt on the roof, but for the moment I'll have a roll in the lean-to.

            

The ricketty racketty panels leaning up against the hedge have been unmolished and some of the wood from the frames saved as lengths, while other bits have been saved as shorts and found their way into plastic sacks of kindling, though some of it is more akin to tinder.

The decent bits of tongue and groove board are being saved for the gable above the doors, and are dispersed between the lean-to and the main gridge.

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   The roof is now felted and has a ridge of galvanised steel. The felt was just insufficient to cover the whole roof, leaving a narrow strip between the top of it and the ridge, so the two available ridge lengths were refashioned with the help of the Dick & Blatter Workmate ("Salvaged from a skip." Ed.) a steel ladder, some sliding cramps and a big nammer, which left them in the shape of an inverted tick with slightly wavy edges rather than a ninverted 'V'.

   The inferior of the gridge is full of longths and shorths of wood, a lawnmolar, garding tools and brewing bockles from half-pint to ten galleons in capacititty. There is also a short stripjointlight that keeps falling orft the skyhook wot secures it. When that cometh to pass, the tube borks. My idea is to fix a long 'U'-shaped track of curting rod and run the striplight on it so I can have it more-or-less sensibly placed for whatever I'm doing. The intention is to have a motorcycle combination lurking there soon.

   Pics to follow.

From the inside it's beginning to look like a shed with big doors: hanging on one of the walls is a spade, a shovel and a garding fork. A trug lurks underneath with trowels and an ickle fork nesting within, while a net of On!ons and another of swedes keep the two cowboys sorry, carboys, and the demijohns and semidemijohns company where they hang from the roof beams. A stack of timber leans nonchalantly against the end wall, waiting for tuits to turn up, and boxen of bockles are breeding like rabbits. A brace of lawn-gnashers, a plywood chest, three pallets, longths of tree wood, a sack-truck and a workmate have sort-of taken the place over, and I might just have to molish another shed before the 'bike comes home innit.

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