Workmen

Yesterday morn I was greeted by sunshine reaching through the kitchen window, starlings squabbling over the feeders and above streaks of blue mixing with white clouds.

Today I find gray clouds cover the earth, the streets damp with rain and at eight in the morning contractors using power drills and small JCBs to dig up the neighbours paved front garden! 

How am I supposed to hear Radio 3 with that cacophony in the background?

I sit here in the drawing room filled with the emanations from the rubbish bin that has required emptying for a while as four (Polish?) workmen do their best to make as much noise as they can while attempting to ensure the job lasts long enough to claim overtime.  I notice the woman next door has not yet appeared, either she did not expect them and is hiding in the back of the house or she is back in bed with her head under a pillow trying to avoid the noise.  

It is a small front of a bungalow and this was concreted over a while back to allow cars to park, possibly she wishes to amend this either to improve the house and raise the selling price or turn this back into a garden.  Either way it ought to be done when I am elsewhere I say.

Lunchtime has passed, the work next door has not completed yet.  If you take a large tin, fill it with stones and rattle it back and forward for thirty minutes, stop for five then begin again over and over then you will begin to understand what I have endured cheerily this morning. 

In spite of this I have continued to work (HA!) and even exercised as I must in a vain attempt to put life back into this fat bloated hulk of mine.  I was encouraged in this by the nurse, an adorable ex-Stasi Commandant, who offered me a choice of one hours exercise a day or twenty four hours of death a day, tact not being an attitude taught back in Berlin.

I therefore exercised for a while, straining and stretching and aching all over.  All this while the rattling stones outside bounced in their tin.  The small JCB has piled some of the concrete into a pile to be dumped in someones back lane when no-one is about while as yet the woman of the house has not shown her face.  It did strike me that these men possibly have arrived at the wrong house while she is on holiday.  This will give her something to boast about later will it not if that is the case?

It will soon be over, sooner if I find a shotgun!

Funnily enough in spite of the cacophony to my right I found myself accidentally falling asleep after a very healthy lunch (there were no pizzas left), strange how that happened but there you are.  Then as the noise continued I found work hard to cope with and, again accidentally, came across some Euro Champs League football on BTS which I had to watch.  Endure might be a better word as games at this period of the competition are often poor and mean little, especially with teams who's name you cannot pronounce and have not the foggiest where they come from.  

This passed the time until this big green lorry appeared and I knew the noise was about to abate.  He had arrived to remove the rubbish thrown up by the workers and as he left, narrowly avoiding the woman attempting to overtake him, the sound died away.  Now I feel like I have gone deaf as there is no sound, not even from the passing traffic which usually fills the air with rubbish and loud music while they queue up in the rush hour.  The mess left behind is a wonder to behold, mud stains the pavements, loose stones and earth lie all around.  I look forward to tomorrows toil, though in the meantime I had  look to see if they had brought down any of our walls, not yet they haven't.