Lessons in pouring concrete

are, so I am told, due to begin tomorrow. Does this mean that the ditch across our driveway will soon be filled in?

The "man in charge of operations" informed me that they "should be doing the concrete on Monday". Maybe, maybe not. I am not holding my breath.

Brother Cat had obtained the Micoo's number from head office to inquire about getting the trailer in and out. "Should be fine by Wednesday" he was told. Maybe, maybe not. I am not holding my breath about that either.

In the meantime I am struggling to get in and out. Yes, there is a small steel plate there but there is also a little ramp of sand and I have problems getting the trike over this. Everyone else in the street has a nice big steel plate in their driveways because they have cars. There is also a load of sand and a load of gravel next to our driveway - just where I might otherwise prowl. Someone is out in the street right now surveying this. I hope that, even on a Sunday, they might move some of it.

It is supposed to rain this coming week. We need the rain - but can  you pour concrete in the rain? Can you pour concrete even if the rain is "just showers"? I don't know.

I remember my maternal grandfather building the big workshop at the rear of their house. How he got permission to put it there is something we will never know. Money or services must have changed hands, probably the latter because my grandfather never seemed to have any money. The building involved rather a lot of concrete. We were not allowed to watch the process. Later though there was a little concreting to be done. My grandfather brought in one of those small concrete mixers and, with my mother's brother, did the rest of the job himself. We children watched this being done. It seemed like a messy business. There was certainly a fuss about keeping the concrete moving in the mixer and then washing the mixer out very thoroughly. 

I suppose we managed to learn something in the process. What still sticks in my mind is my maternal grandmother getting so angry about concrete dirt and dust coming in on the kitchen floor she had just washed - even when we had all removed our shoes at the back door. My brother has done more than one lot of concrete work since then. I haven't asked but I have no doubt he researched the process and then did it. He's good at finding out how to do things like that. I would have to do the same thing.

The concrete work must have been well done. The structure is still there after all these years. It now houses an enormous model railway lay out. The people who bought the house bought it so that the husband could use the building for precisely that purpose. They showed me the lay out once. We talked about how the building had come into being.

     "Yes, I know precisely where the concrete mixer stood," H.... told me with a laugh, "I still can't get rid of it all." He showed me, a lesson in how not to do it as well as do it I suppose.