Springing into life

P says he’ll be catching waves with his boys in southern NSW in two and a half weeks and we’ll be at lock up stage.

Hard to imagine but, yes the new room is really taking shape.

We chose the colour of the room last night – bushland – and the corrugated iron is now on order.

It was all action this morning with the builder, his helper, the plumber and of course the plumber’s dog.

Digging up old things

So the new room can fit on our small parcel of land, the old brick shed has been cut in half.  As a result, the old workbench no longer fits, and is sitting out in the backyard.  

You couldn’t really see it when it was in the shed.  It’s been knocked together out of lots of pieces of old timber. I guess you’d call it organic.  Parts of it are painted a colour we used to call lavatory green. It reminds me of the one from my childhood in Eskdale Road – just over the other side of the racecourse from here. 

It was in an old corrugated iron shed with a dirt floor and Dad and I used to hang out there together on weekends.  He had a light over the workbench and fixed things; a replacement knob fashioned for my Etch-a-Sketch; a new handle made for the axe; the Noritake dinner plates, that mum threw at him in a rage, painstakingly glued back together; broken radios repaired; and wobbly legs on chairs made brand new again.

Dad thought, or perhaps hoped, I had a practical side but I just liked watching him as I twirled the handle of the red vice in and out. It was the place where all the problems could be sorted out. 

If something proved difficult to solve he said, ’This is set to try the likes of you and I, but we won’t be beaten will we?’

And I’d smile tentatively, willing him on to victory.

He worked away in silence, totally immersed in the job in front of him. Sometimes thinking he was in his dental surgery he’d call me nurse,  and ask me to hand him a wood planer or a chisel or to hold on to one end of something and pull .  Things could get pretty rough in a dental surgery back in the sixties.

Then finally I’d hear the magic words, ‘Now we’re cooking with gas,’ and I knew everything was going to be just fine.