Free Bricking It by Nick Spalding Page A

boots really don’t suit me. Green has never been my colour, and I simply don’t have long-enough legs to look like anything other than a bandy-legged gnome, when forced into a pair of rubber wellies.
    Still, better that than ruin another pair of expensive trainers wandering around this place. Especially now that work has started, and vast sections of the overgrown garden have been transformed into a building site.
    I’ll give Fred Babidge his due, once he gets the green light to start on a job, he doesn’t hang about. A mere forty-eight hours after I rang to tell him that we’d had the mortgage approved and now had the cash in our bank account, he was on site and conducting a symphony of clanking metal that would be guaranteed to give anyone a headache who wasn’t foresighted enough to stick in a pair of ear plugs.
    I knock back two paracetamol as I watch the concrete start to be poured underneath the right-hand side of the house.
    This was the first job Fred and his crew of five lads insisted we get done. ‘Ain’t much point doing anything before those foundations are sorted,’ he told us. ‘You don’t want the gaff toppling over, do you?’
    And who could argue with that?
    So here I stand, watching several tons of concrete being poured into the vast hole underneath the house. It looks like enough to support St Paul’s Cathedral, so I’m assuming it’ll render the farmhouse safe from further subsidence with no problems at all.
    It had better, given that it’s costing twelve bloody grand to get it done. When we started on this renovation I had visions of the cash being spent on roll-top baths and new kitchen cabinets, not on filling a big hole under the ground. I hate to spend money on things I can’t see, and it’s rapidly becoming evident that when it comes to house building, most of the money gets spent on stuff that will end up being invisible.
    Still, at least I’m not being called upon to actually help pump the concrete into the hole. I’m all for equality between men and women, but when it comes to standing in a wet muddy hole for hours while heavy machinery turns you deaf, I’m quite happy to live in the 1950s.
    No such luck for Danny, of course. There he stands, looking as miserable as sin, trying to help Fred and his boys, but failing magnificently . It’s like watching a small boy around his dad and uncles. Any minute now they’re going to ask him to go make them a nice cuppa, just to get him out of the way.
    Still, bless him for wanting to be helpful, and actually getting off his arse to make the effort. It’s a good job he only works part-time at the museum, otherwise he’d have no time to come down here and be emasculated by large men covered in tattoos.
    I’ve had to take an unpaid sabbatical from the school. I just couldn’t stand the idea of all this work going on without me here to supervise. And by supervise, I mean stand at the back in ill-fitting wellies and worry about all the money disappearing down the nearest hole. I asked for nine months off, and was amazed to get it with relatively little fuss. I don’t know whether I should be pleased that they capitulated so easily, or worried that they think I’m dispensable enough to get rid off for three-quarters of a year. What I do know is that this house had better sell for the money it’s supposed to; otherwise I’m going to be eating dry pasta out of a hubcap for the rest of my life.
    Taking so long off work is a massive risk. Probably an extremely stupid one, given that I still have to pay rent every month and do annoying things like eat and drink. Luckily, I had these old wedding and engagement rings lying around that I no longer have any use for, so I pawned the bloody things for a few thousand quid, which should keep me going for quite a while.
    I’m betting that the farmhouse will sell for a considerable profit – and that’s far more likely to happen with me on site every day, rather than dividing my time between here