The Wrecking Crew

There is a disturbing trend amongst my friends and acquaintances to entice me into acts of hard, physical labour. Preferably in the hot weather. Why they do this I will never understand. There could be no worse candidate for your handy handyman than myself and it ought to be generally understood that warm weather is an excuse for loafing around and drinking cold beer, not for bashing things with hammers, drilling holes in bits of wood and generally being active and sweaty.

I was horrified when Lord Mac advised me that I had volunteered (when?) to help him clear and demolish a couple of sheds in his aunty's back garden and also help him clear out the house next door.

Here is General Lord Mac addressing his troops; "Now then chaps, all we have to do is knock these sheds down and dump 'em in the skip. Tally Ho!" What you can not see is that the entire workforce consists of the Fatboy who is now trying his best to hide behind a shrub. Personally, I would have engaged a couple of stalwart Eastern European labourers rather than Mr Useless of E17.

This is the skip. Notice how the skip is round the front of the house whereas the sheds are round the back. Yes, all the debris will have to be packed into wheelie bins and dragged round. But by whom?

We had cleared the contents of the first shed so all we had to do was set to and attack the structure with sweat, hammers and crowbar.

Here's the General setting a fine example with a few hearty blows of the wrecking hammer. Give it some welly! He later retired to further consider his plans, as Generals do.

Making a good start. There was so much stuff in those sheds. Notice the wheelie bin loaded up and ready to be dragged round to the skip. Where's the Fatboy? Nowhere to be seen.

Coming along nicely. The second shed is reduced to matchwood by the Fatboy as the General takes tea with his aunties.

All down and all done. Now, just clear it all up and bung it in the skip.

Oh dear, oh dearie me. We are clearly not very happy. The Fatboy has topped up his suntan today but destroyed himself in the process. Done his knee in, pulled a muscle in his back but mainly just in catatonic shock at having to do a day's physical work.

And the General's in little better shape. No major damage sustained due to deliberate skiving but could that be a nasty banging-too-hard-with-the-hammer injury to the wrist? Definate week off there. Not that he can have it as the General needs to plan the next phase of the campaign.

And that is clearing out the house which is full of curious and unusual artifacts, like clocks. Loads of clocks. Hundreds of clocks.

A small part of the great mantle clocks collection. Don't ask.