There’s an ongoing conundrum at the Funny Little Bungalow.
It concerns rubble; there’s just never enough.
We currently have a neat little brick wall rising out of our pit. On one side, there’s still something of a moat. But on the other, there are millions of small rocky clumps, neatly covering the place where our future floor will be.
All of this did not happen by magic. Big Seymour spent Saturday building the wall, and on Sunday, he “gunned up” the huge broken slabs of concrete that used to grace the area outside, and reduced them to uniformed nuggets of rock. It’s definitely progress.
But the problem is this: even after we’ve mashed up the concrete slabs, there is still a huge shortfall in the amount of old rocky bits we have, compared to what we need.
“What do normal people do?” I asked Big Seymour.
“They buy “Type One”,” he replied.
And so, bearing in mind that our budget is laughable, instead of buying the aforementioned rubbly, sandy gritty aggregate that would be any builder’s first choice, Type One, we instead hunt around the garden for more old bits of solid matter that we can chuck into our trench.
We can’t use the coal bunker, for the simple reason that we already broke that up last year, when rubble was required for some other project. We mustn’t use the five hundred “brick pavers” that Big Seymour proudly rescued from someone else’s skip months back – he has plans for those.
Boy Seymour had, somewhat conveniently, been playing with his father’s metal mallet at the weekend. The roof tiles that happened to be in his way at the time did not survive. We will be cursing him when we’re a tile or two short of finishing the roof, but for now, the broken bits make welcome contributions to the cause.
It’s very satisfying, turning rubbish into something useful. For over a year, we’ve stored stacks of rough old bricks in piles on the driveway, waiting for them to come in handy. And on Sunday, that’s just what they did, as they were lobbed in the pit and bashed up, adding a touch of russet-red colouring to the bland grey of the rubble already in-situ.
Yet still, there’s not enough.
And in a vain attempt to reduce build costs, I started to hunt around inside the house…
For some inexplicable reason, I was drawn to The Dormitory, in which three of the Little Seymours sleep. There’s a lot of stuff in there. Maybe, I thought, some of it could prove useful in this instance.
As a family, we try not to be wasteful. Woe betide the Four Little Seymours if they are seen wiping their noses on a book, or eating the Lego. The Rules state that Playmobil has its own special box, and the Sylvanians should not fraternize with the Puppies in my Pocket during down time: they must be put away. But given that the Four Little Seymours like nothing more than taking their various copper-filled purses to the local jumble sale as often as they can, we seem to end up with more junk than is pleasant. And however much I refer to The Other Rules concerning Too Many Toys, they ignore me, especially when, at the end of the jumble sale, all the sorry old homeless toys are being given away to the four little pauper children looking expectantly at the unsold wares and are taken pity on.
So, I was sure to find some bits to dump in the pit, and upon doing a sweep of The Dormitory, I came across Boy Seymour’s broken clays (of the shooting variety) in his stash. Perfect. A few marbles – why not? There were tons of shells, which had been hand-picked by Little Seymour Number Three, straight out of the builder’s bag full of pea shingle and brought into the bedroom for me to return to the outside later. Of course, there were endless bloody conkers, but we’ve already established that they’re no good in the ground, and Little Seymour Number One’s bedroom only threw up several bottles of congealed nail polishes which will surely be fine as an aggregate of sorts…?
I didn’t glean much, and I haven’t had the guts to throw the bits in the pit yet, but I’m optimistic I’ll find more, because every occasion seems to throw up another opportunity…
On Saturday night, after a long day’s brickwork, Big Seymour got a call on The Hotline. His superhero alter-ego, GoGo Man, had to dash on a mercy mission to a nearby 50th birthday party that was in danger of fast becoming dire. Off he went in the Gogomobile to spice up the party, returning in the early hours with scavenged gifts for the Four Little Seymours.
When they awoke the next morning, they were greeted by two enormous foil balloons filled with helium, in the shape of a five and a zero. They were attached with pretty ribbons to two elaborate paperweights, and were a sight to behold.
Within twenty minutes, both balloons were anihilated, the helium had been eaten and the paperweights unwrapped.
Typical, I thought, as I wrestled the purple shiny remainder of Number Five out of the hands of Mini Seymour, who was rolling on the floor with it, reluctant to let go. Nothing ever lasts long in this house.
But there was one up-side, as I gathered the debris, and realised that those pretty paperweights were, in fact, just little dollops of concrete, and they’d be right at home making up part of our foundations. And so, in they went.
My mission, for the rest of this week is to hunt down more rubble-esque junk dotted about the property. So far, I’m eyeing up all the old crockery that doesn’t match, and the ornaments I’ve never liked. And if a couple of vulgar Monster High dolls happen to be discreetly buried, I wonder if the Four Little Seymours would see the irony? They come with their own coffins from Tesco for goodness’ sake – I’d just be finishing the job.
I don’t suppose they’d see the humour in that.
Likewise, I didn’t find it funny when Big Seymour announced that he intends to dig a metre-deep hole in my kitchen floor next weekend, in preparation for a steel beam. It will bring a whole new meaning to the adjective “dusty”, and I may lose the will to ever wash the floor again. But at least it’s sure to generate a bit more rubble, and will give the Four little Seymours’ toys a stay of execution for just a while longer.
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