the temporary office…

well, that has been a highly busy few days for sure – COR what a lot of rearrangements of furniture we have done and what marvellous new set ups there are…. goodo….

We are engaged in what has become major building works in the back garden. It was billed as ‘putting up a shed’ to act as a home office/workshop combo and I gather that families up and down the country are doing the same as the emergency spare room arrangements at the beginning of lockdown seamlessly transition into permanent or at least medium to long term plans from the first urgent short term accommodations.

We are lucky to have the space time and funds to set up a new structure in the garden although, it must be said, the shed has been a trade off between garden for relaxation and delight and garden for working and some leisure thrown in. Here is my preferred garden use to date…..

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However, I am being ably guided by my bruvva to view it as a chance for a change of approach to the garden which to be honest had just evolved rather than been planned over the years. Now is a moment when we can look afresh at all aspects and work out what we really need and will find pleasing. So it is a moment to review planting and overall schemes and a hope for a bigger and better water feature/pond arrangement which may mean Frank and Frederica the frogs can start a family for instance.

Anyway I digress (whenever has that happened before ??) the point of this little story is that as the shed is taking just a few moment longer than we first thought – and I blame the weather for this of course, nothing and noone else- we needed to set up temporary office arrangements so that the old nursery and loft room are available for the darling daughter’s stuff when she relinquishes the lease on her flat.

So that meant that last week found me in a variety of locations but nearly always carrying or moving something that was a bit too big, bit too bulky, bit too heavy, bit to tall or bit too wide for me to manage comfortably- oops. Later in the week I was found in a variety of locations upside down and filling bags and boxes with things that could possibly be thrown away or put into deep storage in the crawl space in the loft. Which in turn led to me being found on hands and knees in that aforementioned crawl space with the aforementioned bags and boxes for deep storage and then inelegantly reversing down the crawl space to a turning point from whence I would escape the crawling to find, all too often, that it was no longer really possible to stand up for a while until the blood had run back into the cramped limbs.

At the end of it all – job very very well done including the heroic tip trip by Mr Mackie where he had to sit in a queue for some hours or was it days- this is the view from the temporary office – next doors gardens and the allotments and then the fields…..ahhhhhhhhhhh