Roof

We have been doing exciting things.

As you can see from the photograph, we have been putting the roof on the conservatory.

We were supposed to be taking Mark’s taxi back to the MOT station, but the sun shone, so we ignored that pressing, but nevertheless boring chore, and started piecing the thrilling new roof together.

Obviously Mark worked it all out. It is a good job that I am married, because even when he told me what all the bits were for, I still didn’t really understand. To me all that was obvious was that there were dozens of identical metal strips with rubber bits and screws.

It is so long since we bought it anyway that I had forgotten what the roof was supposed to look like.

When you buy Lego, or Meccano, it always comes in a huge box with a handy picture on the front. The box is always three times as big as it needs to be given the diminutive nature of its contents, but the picture is really useful. I would recommend this to manufacturers of conservatories should any of them read these pages.

Mark got all of the bits out and thought about it hard whilst I went to the bank. By the time I got back he had sorted them out, and they were all arranged in various piles around the walls.

He must have been very thoughtful because they were all in exactly the right place, even the one with an extra screw hole for the middle bit. I would never have noticed that, and was quietly impressed at his observational powers and forward planning.

It needed more hands than the two of us had got, so we had to get Oliver to come and help.

Oliver has not been terribly sociable lately, because he has discovered a new computer game. It is called Teloma, and it has become his new Asperger’s Syndrome Special Interest. He emerges from it only long enough to resupply with pizza and occasionally change his dressing gown. 

As it happened,  he is playing with a crowd of new acquaintances who are all American. Fortuitously, America was still in bed at the time we wanted an extra pair of hands for conservatory roof erection, so he was quietly happy to come and help, although he drew his Health And Safety line at the most dodgy of the ladders, which you might be able to spot in the picture.

Actually the whole edifice is considerably bigger than it looks in the picture, you can only really tell if you compare it to the height of the back door. Mark is not standing on the ground, but on a stack of concrete slabs and bags of cement. The centre bit comes almost to the height of the first floor window.

Getting it all the way up there was A Challenge.

We bolted a few of the struts on to the centre piece, and then between us all, lifted it up into the air.

Given that the centre bit is several feet even above Mark’s reach, this was no small achievement, and quite a bit of teetering on very dodgy home made step ladders was involved. Mark made the step ladders by tying both of next door’s ladders together and getting me to hold them at the bottom so that they didn’t collapse unexpectedly.

He had to stand very still when I had to let them go to go and shove the other bit of roof into the air.

Oliver refused point blank to go on those ladders and stuck to the other ladders, the ones which could be prudently leaned against the wall.

We hauled the roof up and then bolted it together, adding more and more bits until finally we had run out.

It took all afternoon.

Mark says that tomorrow he is going to start putting some glass in it all.

I absolutely can’t wait.