Off track

Our place ‘ Bala cottage’ was right on the lane. As I worked on her people would pass by walking their dogs and stop for a chat. Usually it was about the build and how I’d been brave enough to take it on and all the palaver that dealing with our particular council involved. I would simply explain that I’d done some research and dealt with them previously and knew the boundaries. Actually, dealing with our council on this project was very difficult, the place had history in their minds. They’d previously tried to demolish it and got knocked back, they may have been forced to retreat, but they certainly hadn’t forgotten and let bygones be bygones, as I was finding out.

The real issue was location and access, basically there was one dead end lane to over 300 properties, including farms and farm buildings.

They had sprung up in a time before planning on the back of a new laid access called the Severn valley railway line that was built in the last century to connect Shrewsbury to Worcester. The halt on that line became a very popular stop for fishermen and their families on a day out from Birmingham, they fell in love with the valley and approached the farmer for permission to build cabins.

So basically, the place had sprung up two miles off the beaten track. For nigh on 100 years the place had been managed by the owners and the farmer. The road such as it was had been built by the railway company for access to their line and as a sweetener for the farmer, it certainly hadn’t been maintained by the council in that time and there was no lighting sewerage system or waste collection. The water ran away through streams and land drains, and the waste was put in a large skip half a mile away that the home owners paid for yearly and was managed by the farmer. The council had no intention whatsoever of spending any of their money changing that to a proper system. They did charge us proper rates though.

The people stopping to chat would ask if I did work for others, I’d point them in the direction of Tom initially, as he’d become a good friend and I didn’t want to step on his toes, but Tom was not too fussed, he got to hear about the enquires and actually suggested I might make a good fist of building around there and offered me all the building jobs he didn’t want.

David the farmer saw the potential in getting all the properties connected to main water supply and asked Tom if he would like the jobs when they popped up. Tom said he had enough to do, so that job came my way too. So too did the JCB and all it’s oddity’s.

I managed to cut my driving down to two short weekend days with early starts and now spent a few days a week repairing other people’s properties or connecting water to them, along with the odd cesspit build I was suddenly becoming a handyman builder. I never planned that, it just went that way. I needed a van!

The van came via a friend Chris from Coventry, Bob’s son in law, an electrician who’d bought it from a sale of ex BT stock. It had a dented front wing, no mot, was originally yellow, but now painted green and had a ladder rack and all the original BT shelving. It was a Marina van, but it was what I needed. It cost me £180!

I got Chris’s mate to deliver it on trade plates. I owned it for the next five years and never taxed or insured it once. I never left the fields. It served me well that old marina van. Can’t say I ever actually liked it, but it drove okay, started on the button and never let me down. Which as it turned out was a good thing because from that moment on I was the local handyman. I was permanently on call and my life was never dull.

 

I was looking up the area on some OS maps last night, was a fabulous spot. I also know why you were very knowledgeable about he rocket testing place as it was just over the river.

Loving the story. I wish I could tell a life story like this

Louey

 

Yes, also my neighbour across the lane worked there!

 

Thank you. I’ve only touched on the characters. Billy the fish was a real gem, but he’s still alive and I had a coffee with him a couple of weeks ago, so I have to be careful what I write

There are others though

 

Just to clarify this area a little. There were two very distinct areas of wooden homes in the valley. The one I lived in was the known as the bottom meadows. This was regarded as the original place that was built pre First World War by the gentry.

The other area was over the railway line and less desirable as the places were built post Second World War and as such weren’t regarded as homes, just holiday homes. Nice, but the residential and fishing rights made the bottom meadows quite a lot more desirable.

This meant little to me or Lou, but people would ask if we lived in the bottom or across the railway line. When we replied the bottom they’d say things like ‘ you must be well off then, where’s your Rolls?’ We never knew if it was a compliment or a put down!

 

They say there’s a book in each of our lives.

 

sometimes I think mine is just a pamphlet, or I'm just rubbish at recalling some of the adventures of life. I think life has numbed me a bit recently - ended up being focused on a few negatives instead of the whole picture.

Then I realised that the ups as well as the downs are part of the adventures and you can't turn the pages back but just get on with it. I think there's a Little Feat/Lowell George song in there

Louey

 

At home our place was moving on rapidly. David had thrown a spanner in the works initially when he told me of the extra land we owned at the bottom of our garden and the plans to fence it off to distinguish the boundaries, but he did a lovely job of the post and rail fencing, and even supplied us with a five bar gate and posts to form a bottom driveway.

This was helpful in the summer when the field was dry, but definitely not in the winter.

Our major task and quite a big one was a parking space near the house off the lane. This was quite a difficult task as that side of the property was on a very steep slope and the lane very narrow with high hedges. There had to be some serious thought go into this job.


In the end I decided to form a concrete retainer wall using scaffold planks as the former and reinforcing the concrete with rebar. Unfortunately I could only get an electric mixer onto the site and not order readymix.

My old mixer had a crack in the drum that protruded out at the front and was a bit temperamental. The area I was working on was sloped and filled partly with 8 Ton of sharp sand and a pallet of cement, the room to work was very restricted.

Nonetheless I persevered and slowly built up the retainer wall. As each day progressed I added two more planks on top of the previous day’s work and set to hand mixing another few ton.

The shape of the former was an L. There was a 18ft wide back area and 30 ft along the side. With the restricted work space each day’s progress was painstakingly slow, but I pushed on.

Maybe I was pushing on a little too much on the third day, because in an instant the mixer drum grabbed my arm, the bit that was sticking out had become entangled in my shirt sleeve. Never underestimate the power of a loaded belle mixer. Within a second I was lifted off my feet and was off down the slope, the mixer tipped over and began following me down the slope and over the new retainer wall. A lot of thoughts went through my mind, paramount was the fact I was powerless to stop it and was heading for a ten foot drop with the possibility of a loaded mixer following me. I couldn’t switch it off the momentum was too fast, my arm was hurting and my head was being bashed every second on everything I passed, the wall, the floor, some bushes and a pile of blocks I’d stacked for the final three feet of retainer. Then the drop loomed. I closed my eyes and waited. Silence. The drum had stopped turning. I was literally on the edge of the drop and it all stopped dead. The plug had popped out of the transformer box, the extension lead had stretched to the last second and popped the plug that connected my transformer box to the extension lead. Blimey that was close.

My head was cut and bumped, my shirt was ruined and my arm needed stitches, but that final fall may have been far more serious if that mixer had landed on me. Lou came running to see what had happened and in her wonderfully caring way saw to my injuries. She soothed my furrowed brow, tended my wounds with love and care and laughed. I don’t know if it was hysterics or relief, but we both looked at the accident zone and roared. I was okay, and standing back looking at what just happened was hilariously silly and we saw the funny side.

I got patched up and the next day was back on it with dire warnings From Lou to slow down and work smarter. She popped out every half hour and checked on my progress under the guise of bringing me a cuppa.

I just got on with it and by the weekend the first stage was completed. The concrete retainer was up to road height and the sloped area it contained filled with hardcore. On Monday I would build a block wall up another four course on top of the retainer and cap it with 12” coper slabs.

In the meantime I had procured one hundred 3 x 2 concrete slabs for the driveway floor. They were free, but 5 miles away and we only had a little box trailer. They had to be moved that weekend or I lost them. This weekend was going to be busy!

TBC

 

Slab day.

The only person with a tow bar was my dad, he had a Ford Sierra diesel that he pulled a caravan with. Dad as always was up to help and we hitched up the little camping trailer we had and set off on the five miles to the house they were at.

The slabs had been taken up in readiness for a new driveway that was being done on Monday. They were those big 3 x 2 two inch thick heavy jobbies. We decided the trailer could take 12 and loaded them from front to back with a rope lashing them to the front to stop them toppling backward. Off we set home with the first load and although the car pulled them okay, the steering felt quite light and odd. Anyhow, that load done safely we set off for the next 7 or 8 journeys. When we’d done a couple more we decided we could shorten the amount of journeys by taking 16 at a time. Mistake!

Going down Long bank the car started to speed up, then as we braked went into a snake, the front end of the car was sent from side to side, oncoming traffic swerved to avoid us and we struggled to gain control again, but we did and slowed down. Then she was off all over the road again and we struggled again to gain control. I pulled over and went to see what was causing it. Basically the weight was all on the hitch. The 16 slabs only took up the front three thirds of the trailer bed and the weight on the back of the car was affecting the steering. To get home we simply moved half a dozen to the back and drove slowly. We went back to twelve after that. Better a bit more work than an accident. Lesson learned!

It took about ten trips to get them all home and took all day. We humped those slabs on and off all blooming days and ached from top to bottom, god they’re heavy those slabs. We also covered over a hundred miles when you tot it up. Still they were free and in the end they were on the driveway waiting to be laid when we were ready. Result.

On Monday with a clear work area and the drum on my mixer hammered straight and welded I built the block wall in one long day. I laid the copers on Tuesday and the slabs on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday I parked my car in the drive. Yay, eight months and I had a driveway. Lou said it looked great but wouldn’t it be better with a car port. More work!

 

I feel more like old man Steptoe today