The builder is a jolly chap. He called us up a couple of nights ago and announced Ready to start on your barn Wednesday. Can you make sure it’s fully cleared“. Oh how we laughed. This structurally dangerous outbuilding” as the surveyor was want to sneer was resuscitated three years ago through a combination of new timbers and an industrial nail gun. Since then we gleefully stuffed it to the rafters with bikes and life crap. Until this evening anyway when a concerted effort stripped it back and unearthed forgotten items including ancient photo albums: “Daddy, that’s not you, you’ve got hair. And you’re thin“. Kids eh? Not overburdened with much social veneer.

For reasons too painfully convoluted to document here, we decided to do a second conversion adding plumbing, heating, insulation and a whole bunch of cost. The predicted but in no way definite result would be a new home office for me and a new workshop for, er, me as well. We’d lose a garage we never used and my current office becomes somewhere we can lock the kids away. But only for a couple of days at the most otherwise that’s just cruel.

We finished it tonight in the rain. Well nearly anyway.

Top Row: Stuffed in the shed: so many bikes, so little room.

Middle row: New office and workshop. Current office 🙁

Wife’s bike gets what it deserves.

How the hell am I going to go riding? A logistical planning exercise that’d tax even veterans of an Olympic bid . Short of going in thru the window, it looks as if I’ll have to reverse the entire process to even unearth a bike. And as for the tools, they’re buried behind gardening accouterments and rusty pots of suspicious liquids “ could be paint, could be abandoned wine making. No way I’m opening one to find out.

Still considering my record of tool based disasters, (motto: If it isn’t broken don’t fix it, if it is broken send it to Sideways Tim before you fuck it up beyond all possible redemption) this is probably No Bad Thing. I can get to all my other gear tho “ that’s in my office although unless I develop a late developing long jump talent, the book case is off limits for a while.

Assuming the builder is working on the same Julian calendar as the rest of us, this project should be finished before Wembley. I chose that analogy carefully as the price is similar and I’m hoping to get the Queen to open it. Failing that the queen down the road’ll do just fine.

Then I’ll have a rather splendid office and even more splendiferous workshop. Just think of the damage I can do with that much elbow room. And the piece de resistance? ˜The TOOL WALL’ with proper ˜dead tool’ outlines and millions of sockets for scary powertools; purpose unknown.

With hot and cold running water, coffee machine, sofa, DVD player and Internet access, I shall never need to go in the house again.

H’mm no wonder my wife was so keen on the project.