Flashdance. Sort of.

It was like a scene out of a well-known eighties movie in my kitchen on Sunday. Big Seymour had his welding mask on, and was attempting to secure his enormous steel erection with small silver screws deep in the pit.

The weekend started with a flurry of activity, and by 9.30 a.m. on Saturday, something monumental had happened. The Gigantic Steel Beam had been laid across the roof of the Funny Little Bungalow, where it will form the basis of our new, improved home, and hopefully hold up the (as yet only dreamed about) First Floor.
This was not without its complications.

The Crane Man had been cajoled into popping along to lift the beam. He was able to come at 9 am precisely. Consequently, Big Seymour was up on the roof at 8.15 a.m., noisily cutting through the old surface to make a rut for the steel to sit in. The din was atrocious, and I sent a barrage of texts to my neighbours, apologising profusely for the untimely interruption to their lie-in.
By 9 o’clock, Crane Man had arrived as promised. He reversed his veritable pantechnicon onto the tight driveway and within a number of minutes, had installed the backbone of our house. And then he was gone.
For a small fee, Crane Man had saved Big Seymour the odious task of recruiting as many able-bodied (yet somewhat reluctant) family, friends and acquaintances to help him lift the beam by hand.
My job in all this was to keep the Four Little Seymours out of the kitchen.
I didn’t really ever find out why, suffice to say that many tons of steel were being lifted onto the ageing roof there, and should the beam have slipped, it was probably best not to be underneath it. The Little Seymours seemed to understand the danger, and watched patiently from the bedroom window as the steel was craned into place.
Crane Man left as quickly as he arrived, and all that remained was for Big Seymour to secure the giant beam to the uprights, before we could really relax.
Unfortunately, the weather on Saturday was deceptive. The sun was out and the sky was blue, and all Big Seymour did to cover up the remaining hole in the roof was shroud it in plastic sheeting and pop a plank on top.
We only realised that we were in for hurricane conditions when we were out at a party that night, discussing the day’s achievements, when folk started laughing that we’d chosen the wrong day to patch our roof in shanty town fashion. I saw the blood drain from Big Seymour’s face as he processed that the plank would probably not hold. Upon arriving home to a babysitting Grandma, we discovered that the “explosion” noise she heard earlier in the evening was indeed the makeshift weather-proofing falling off the roof.
The Little Seymours weren’t bothered. In fact, one wasn’t even there – Number Two was out on a “sleepover”, and was at no risk from leaking or collapsing ceilings anyway.

Despite the conditions, when Sunday morning came, the only problem was that the plastic sheeting had been rather wild and noisy in the night after it had escaped its remaining planky restraints (maybe another grovelling text to the neighbours is in order..?). But the house was dry, and the beam secure.

Never one to sit on his laurels, Big Seymour got busy on Sunday, and before I knew it, there was an enormous dollop of “pug” sitting on a board in the middle of the kitchen floor. Like bees around a hive, the Little Seymours were attracted to this lookalike pile of dinosaur dung as if it were nectar, and it was all I could do to stop them smearing it all over the walls before Big Seymour had time to use it to build a block wall around the semi-buried vertical beam. As he went along, he welded wall ties to it periodically, although sadly, where he was standing deep in the pit, he didn’t have much room to dance, so it was more like Scrapheap Challenge than anything accompanied by Irene Cara.

Whilst Big Seymour was hiding behind his welding mask, I shielded Mini Seymour from the burning glare with my bottom, and thus she was in no danger. But it did rather interrupt her colouring, which she was studiously trying to do, despite the chaos around her.

All in all, it was a productive weekend, and despite the deteriorating state of my house, it all feels rather exciting. The kitchen has lost a door and gained a part-wall, a pit and a beam. The roof has holes in it. But none of this matters – the rain stayed out, Big Seymour didn’t break himself putting the steel in, and the best thing of all, there is no way we can possibly host Christmas dinner this year!
I think we might even go away….