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rocking the garage rock
Wednesday, 5 October 2005 03:43 pmAs many of you will know, the Evil Landlord's theme tune for the last few years has been "I need a garage!" Speaking as the Person Most Likely To Cook In This House, I can only agree, since I cannot say that sharing the kitchen with jewellery-making, wax-melting, leather-baking, armour-construction, bead-firing, riveting, soldering, Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, is particulary easy. He's just darned lucky I've never actually managed to serve him Chicken Pewter Surprise for supper.
At any rate, several years of the theme song on repeat has finally borne fruit, in that the builders arrived bright and early yesterday morning to start garage-building operations. In truly incomprehensible and Mystic Constructor Fashion, the foreman and sidekick turned the sod, so to speak, by chipping the gutter from the corner of the house with a small instrument resembling an ice-pick. (Sound effect: giant demented woodpecker with a muffled cast-iron bill). While this happened, the builder and architect were crouched around the kitchen table with the Evil Landlord in the approved buccaneers-with-knife-in-table manner, plotting over plans. (I love architect's plans: so beautifully tidy and clear, everything neatly measured and diagrammatised. They appeal on a profound level to my inner jackbooted fascist).
Subsequently, all higher-order management has vanished, and we are down to two minion builder-types who are excavating beautiful holes outside my bedroom window. (Sound effect: giant rubberised pestle dropped repeatedly from a height, interspersed with metallic chinking noises, like a clumsy dungeon thief unlocking a chest around the corner). I note with sorrow the rolling of the construction landfortresses over the pitiful trench-warfare resistance provided by the moles, who have apparently been working desparately over the last week or so to fortify the frontier against the invaders. I swear the last two or three giant mole-hills were proto-machine-gun-nests. They are now small, sad patches of levelled earth. The sapper activity was more positive, at least the undermining from within had some casualties (me, predictably enough, catching the top of the open car door with my chin as the brickwork sagged beneath my incautious feet. Sound effect: screams and agonised swearing).
The moles have presumably tunnelled speedily out of the area, defeated by the superior digging technology that produces a trench twenty foot long and two foot deep in a single day. (At any rate, the cats' mole-corpse-count is not significantly higher). Not content with this silent surrender, however, the Army of Reconstruction have apparently pursued a scorched earth policy; I returned from campus this morning to discover that they'd wantonly and utterly uprooted the flourishing bed of lavendar and jasmine from the corner by my bedroom. In true Ministry of Peace fashion, this gesture is essentially arbitrary, since the building is going nowhere near there. I have been carefully nurturing those pleasant-smelling plants for two years now, and am somewhat miffed at their summary removal. A whole summer's worth of my shower water carted out there, daily, with dedication and resentment! There will be a stiff letter to the Times about this, I can tell you.
I feel impelled to point out that it is, of course, completely inevitable that the next eight weeks of noise, dust, noise, vibration, cheerful builder shouts and noise will coincide with some of the most demanding and intense academic work I have yet to face. The building site is approximately 3.5 m from my study window. It's some sort of natural law.
At any rate, several years of the theme song on repeat has finally borne fruit, in that the builders arrived bright and early yesterday morning to start garage-building operations. In truly incomprehensible and Mystic Constructor Fashion, the foreman and sidekick turned the sod, so to speak, by chipping the gutter from the corner of the house with a small instrument resembling an ice-pick. (Sound effect: giant demented woodpecker with a muffled cast-iron bill). While this happened, the builder and architect were crouched around the kitchen table with the Evil Landlord in the approved buccaneers-with-knife-in-table manner, plotting over plans. (I love architect's plans: so beautifully tidy and clear, everything neatly measured and diagrammatised. They appeal on a profound level to my inner jackbooted fascist).
Subsequently, all higher-order management has vanished, and we are down to two minion builder-types who are excavating beautiful holes outside my bedroom window. (Sound effect: giant rubberised pestle dropped repeatedly from a height, interspersed with metallic chinking noises, like a clumsy dungeon thief unlocking a chest around the corner). I note with sorrow the rolling of the construction landfortresses over the pitiful trench-warfare resistance provided by the moles, who have apparently been working desparately over the last week or so to fortify the frontier against the invaders. I swear the last two or three giant mole-hills were proto-machine-gun-nests. They are now small, sad patches of levelled earth. The sapper activity was more positive, at least the undermining from within had some casualties (me, predictably enough, catching the top of the open car door with my chin as the brickwork sagged beneath my incautious feet. Sound effect: screams and agonised swearing).
The moles have presumably tunnelled speedily out of the area, defeated by the superior digging technology that produces a trench twenty foot long and two foot deep in a single day. (At any rate, the cats' mole-corpse-count is not significantly higher). Not content with this silent surrender, however, the Army of Reconstruction have apparently pursued a scorched earth policy; I returned from campus this morning to discover that they'd wantonly and utterly uprooted the flourishing bed of lavendar and jasmine from the corner by my bedroom. In true Ministry of Peace fashion, this gesture is essentially arbitrary, since the building is going nowhere near there. I have been carefully nurturing those pleasant-smelling plants for two years now, and am somewhat miffed at their summary removal. A whole summer's worth of my shower water carted out there, daily, with dedication and resentment! There will be a stiff letter to the Times about this, I can tell you.
I feel impelled to point out that it is, of course, completely inevitable that the next eight weeks of noise, dust, noise, vibration, cheerful builder shouts and noise will coincide with some of the most demanding and intense academic work I have yet to face. The building site is approximately 3.5 m from my study window. It's some sort of natural law.
