Another step out of lockdown. Another aspect of delegation, about which I waxed lyrical, in my last retirement blog. Part of that delegation involved buildings. This blog features 3 more ‘buildings’ if I may call them that. Two of them ours and one belonging to my Derbyshire neighbour.
It’s strange how buildings, already existing and hoping to exist, figure in these retirement blogs. A recent Vineyard Year’s podcast was all about my first shed, the last retirement blog was about our barn and the Colorado cabin. Yep, buildings of various types, sizes and ages definitely figure in my retirement. What does this tell us? What deep-seated retirement need do these structures meet?
So this first trip to our Derbyshire property for six months, apart from a certain degree of trepidation as to what we would find, brought three ‘buildings’ kicking and screaming into the sunlight (and it actually was sunny as you can see from the accompanying photos.
The one above (which has not figured before) has been revealed as a result of my neighbour (he who I delegate any work related to this house (where I’m writing this) and garden. His lockdown task, in place of his usual walking exercise, has been to slash and burn his way to the bottom of our garden, revealing parts not seen for many a while.
The greenhouse was the first to be revealed (see first photo below). We knew it was there but had barely seen it at all in the last lockdown year, the bottom of our garden remaining impenetrable. The second structure (see above) was a ‘shed’ and this hasn’t been seen for years. The photo of it here actually shows its best side so you can imagine what the rest of it looks like. Well, not like a shed, that’s for sure.
I still have hopes that restoration of the greenhouse might be a delegatable project, but the ‘shed’, if it’s to have any kind of future existence, needs to be pulled down and rebuilt. This was my grandfather’s old shed right at the bottom of my childhood garden. It’s well out of sight of the house and hence the scene of a number of my childhood misdemeanours.
Like firing my air-rifle through the window to see if it would shatter. It didn’t, it just left a hole in the glass for my mother to find. Hard to dispute as I remember. Then there was firing off a shot-gun cartridge by aiming my air-rifle at the firing cap of the cartridge. The only mistake I made in this project was having the cartridge pointed up the garden towards the house. My grandma never did work out what the pellets hitting the kitchen window (a good distance away thankfully) actually were. I mean she couldn’t have been expecting her grandson to be stupid enough to point a cartridge at the house and explode it, could she?
And the piece de resistance was, exploding my home-made bomb. Home-made out of weed-killer and sugar and packed into a container of some kind. Apart from these outright illegal activities (no drugs or alcohol or girls at that time, of course), the shed was packed full of his tools and all kinds of chemicals he used for who knows what. So happy memories and it would be nice to preserve them in some form. This would be the crème de la crème of delegation.
And the other photo below is a picture of my neighbour’s greenhouse. A bit of a cheat in that I don’t own it but it was definitely a part of my childhood. When I was a child it belonged to my Uncle Alvin and Aunty Dora who lived next door (not my real uncle and aunt of course, that’s just what you called people in those days). The lady who now rents the property and her father, who started clearing the garden inspired by ‘my man’ clearing ours, had no idea that under the mountain of vegetation, brambles and weeds was a complete (although slightly ramshackled) greenhouse that, like ours, has probably been there for nearly 100 years. The last picture below shows both greenhouses together, like the old days.
So after best or worst part of a year, discovering these hidden edifices feels strangely appropriate to this weird world we’re a part of. As I say I was slightly nervous about what I might find after this time away from the property but I didn’t expect this.
True in this time of lockdown we’ve become a bit nostalgic, we’ve watched a lot of TV programmes about ye olden days. Architecture has often figured – Wingfield railway station, Bennerley viaduct (look it up) but we hadn’t expected, strange though these times are, to discover our very own architectural heritage. Just goes to show, you never know what you’re going to find when you (or somebody you pay) sweep aside the detritus of a whole life. It’s like a metaphor for retirement isn’t it? Maybe not.
