Plum Job

There are two categories of person who roll up to the Reclamation Yard in order to source some materials for a project.

The first is the professional or enthusiastic amateur. They know exactly what they want and can converse in that special language that deals in abbreviated forms of measurement for length..."it's so and so mills", weight, ..."give me a half a hundred weight" , overall size..."I need something effing big".

Between two like minded individuals this type of conversation is a wonder to behold and also very baffling. It serves its purpose of identifying like minded and similar status persons and weeds out those who are merely pretending to have a technical grounding and understanding.

That introduces the second category which, frankly, is everyone else.

I started off firmly in the first broad Venn diagram. Confidently I announced to the Yard Foreman that I wanted two railway sleepers, large. This will have confused him as I was obviously a civilian but seemed to know exact quantities and sizes even though, admittedly, there was not much room for error in my particular requirement. He was dead set on catching me out though. Do you want actual or authentic sleepers?. This threw me completely. I was not aware that there was more than one type. I have found in business that if flummoxed by a question it is always best to throw it back but in a way that makes the inquisitor feel important. I replied , what sort do you feel is the best overall for a small garden project? He was now in his element. The authentics were hardwood, probably not that ethical in origin and in the UK climate would soon go soggy and rot away but not before providing the ideal environment for wood lice, earwigs, ants and spiders who would later, you betcha, all migrate into your house upon loss of their habitat. The actual sleepers on the other hand came from outside Doncaster and had been so saturated in tar that they were to all intents and purposes lumps of prehistoric residues around a dense inorganic core that could not sustain any life whatsoever.

The respective prices reflected these factors. Authentic £40 each on account of labour costs for small indigenous children to hack away with a razor sharp axe to give a distressed look plus shipping . Actual £30 each normally but on special clearance at £20 on the basis that from the following week sales of actual sleepers would be banned on contaminative and health risk grounds. Carcinogenic influences aside I went for two of the LNER originals.

My next shopping item exposed me for the technical fraud that I was. I asked for some plum coloured slates.

I had a scheme in mind to gentrify the patio and a nice surface dressing of slate chippings would look very nice against the new decking boards, around the water feature and adhered in a sticky bituminous mess to the aforementioned heritage of British Rail. I had no idea how much I would need although in retrospect I could easily have worked out the area in square metres and depth in.....yes, mills to arrive at an authoritative volume.

As I said, I was not in the first category of customers who would be prepared with this on the tip of their tongues. If I am at a loss for the right words I do tend to rely heavily on my arm and hand movements and for this I am constantly ridiculed by my children. In the sales office I vaguely sketched out with both arms a one dimensional representation of the patio. The Foreman gave a disdainful look akin to that inflicted on his in laws at Christmas who insisted on playing charades. Half a ton was a minimum load for the tipper lorry he explained with some relief that my windmill impression did not have to be endured any longer. I was prepared to take the sleepers immediately in the car but he advised that extruding tar would make a real mess on velour and he would make sure they would be delivered with the slate.

Later that same day I got to appreciate, first hand, what a large qauntity half a ton of slate actually was. The truck just squeezed in reverse through the driveway gateposts before the hydraulics strained and deposited a huge mound of reddish blue-grey fragments with a glass shattering type noise and a choking, persistent dust cloud.

It took the rest of the day to relocate the material nearer to the rear of the house so that at least I could park the car on the driveway. It was hard work even with George's large wheelbarrow and the three children scooping up smaller loads with their seaside buckets. The slate went down as the finishing touch for the project. After a short, sharp shower at tea time the sheen on the beautiful plum coloured hue made it all worthwhile.

Unfortunately there was, by my flawed estimation, more than half of the delivery still in our new pile. Some of it was run around the base of the house walls where there was an established pea gravel gully, often called a french drain. The transformation from a light brown aggregate colour to plum looked good. A bit more covered up the ugly post war concreting around the summer house. A thin layer in the greenhouse would, I thought, provide a porous surface on which to place the grow-bags if we ever got around to getting some. This distribution did not really make any inroads into the replica of Mount Kilimanjaro just by the back door.

I mentioned the surplus to my neighbour but plum slate did not hold the same attraction with him as it did with me. I was sure the Reclamation place did not offer a refund on errors of judgement.

The solution was a bit of a compromise. The very end of the garden was a constant probem with weeds, nettles and sharp thorny brambles. For a couple of weeks in the year it sprouted with bluebells giving some welcome brightness but for the remaining 50 weeks it was just a tiresome chore to keep under control. When subsequently covered over in a patented thick weed resistant matting and the balance of the slates I could very well just forget that it was there, forever. Bliss.

That was, unbelievably, 10 years ago.

 I have just spent the day on hands and knees at the bottom of the garden grubbing up the slates from the surprisingly still effective matting and transporting them back to the patio to be used in an extension of the layered plum finish going northwards under the kitchen window and where the little lean to shed used to be. There is, within a few handfuls, the exact amount required for my latest, but as my wife points out long overdue, project.

I am now unbearably smug. That half ton resembles perhaps one of the best guesstimates I have ever made in my life. I will be applying for membership of the first category technical club very shortly.

Whatever next?