On A Bender

When I was told by my groundwork team that we needed to draw up a bar-bending schedule I though, ‘My God! A pub crawl with the builders!’

Largely, my experience of such things is as a student when we would trek from bar to bar and have a drink in each. We’d get in, after finishing the night in a club, and be up, bright-tailed and bushy-eyed for the first lecture of the day where we’d sleep off the effects of the night before.

Today I’m much more sedate: I can’t afford it for one. I recently heard of a pub in London serving beer at £8 a pint! That’s a night out in Huddersfield!

So the prospect of a bar-bending schedule with pick-up driving, construction workers was daunting to say the least. Thank heavens I was wrong!

What it means is a list of all the steel that is needed to make the formwork for the reinforced concrete beams and slab. I tried doing a few calculations myself but thought best to consult an expert so my structural engineer, Dave, who drew up the foundation design in the first place, is going to do this for me.

The plan is to start the groundworks at the beginning of July - however - my builder has suffered two setbacks: his long-time collaborator has had a roofing disaster so he feels obliged to sort it out and his second in command has left, leaving just him and a labourer.

So a one year build turns into two…three…eight…

Que sera, sera

Whatever will be, will be

The future's not ours to see

Que sera, sera

What will be, will be

It’ll be built one (Doris) day!