Three Dont Tango 30

Every week I am back at the building site. The footings were inspected, and I built blocks up to the damp proof course, and then along came this massive truck containing my bungalow. There were prefabricated sections lined with insulation and faced with plywood. There were window frames, and roof trusses. I carried great sections down the driveway onto the site. They were eight feet by four feet and weighed about two and a half hundredweight. I bent myself over like a dwarf and lugged them along on my back, trotting like a coolie. My fingers ached and were red and blistered. My back came up in large bruises, and my muscles began to seize up.
At the end of the day I collapsed into my sleeping bag on the floor of the minibus. Annabel helped me carry the great sheets, and did all the shopping and cooking. and tried hard to keep things clean, while back home mother looked after the children.
It was march. It was very hot. There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun burned down with an intensity I wouldn't have believed possible so early in the year.
The next job was to cover the whole of the building area with concrete. The bungalow measured thirty metres by seven, which meant we had to cover it with eighteen cubic metres of the stuff.
The first load came at ten a.m. We had a man with a tractor and trailer to get it from the road to the site. Annabel and I then barrowed it to where it was needed, tamped it down and ultimately tried to level it.
The second load came at twelve, shortly after I had finished levelling the previous load, so we started barrowing again under the relentless sun. As we worked back we didn't have to barrow the second lot so far, but I was getting very tired, and it was about twenty to two before we finished shifting and leveling, and Annabel got the lunch: salad and some bread, and something to drink.
At five past two the third load arrived, and we abandoned the food and got to our shovels.
I was ready to drop almost from the moment we started barrowing again, but Annabel was shoveling away and so we both supported each other until at quarter to four in the afternoon we managed to get the last section levelled. I have never ached so much in all my life.
Annabel got the tea while I washed the shovels and the barrow, and the spirit level, and went and slumped in the front seat of the minibus.
After tea we set out our bedding, then went down to the pub at the bottom of the hill, and sat there totally shattered for a couple of hours, then went back up the hill to bed.
The next day we started bolting the wall sections of the building together, and managed to get all the walls up in two days. We then drove home for much needed recuperation.
The following week Edwin came up with us and helped get the roof trusses on top of the walls, and fixed into position; and the bungalow began to look as if it was for real.
And so started the pattern. We would go up on a monday morning at half past six in the morning and work for two, maybe three, or maybe even four days, and then come back home and crash out for the rest of the week. And so the building progressed.
And so I regressed. I was physically tough, but I was tearing myself to shreds. I was permanently tired, cross and irritable. I was cross with the building and the pain, but I shouted at Annabel when anything went wrong, which seemed to be all the time, because I was trying to cope with things I was not proficient in, and which would have been hard work for three experts, let along one amateur.
I would bellow at her, and shout the most flagrant abuse at her, meaning every word with a malignant viciousness. At the same time I would be in her place feeling all the foul abuse, and wishing to god I could stop saying it all; wishing I could calm down; wishing I could get up and leave the whole bloody business; wishing I had enough money to go and lay on a beach in Spain, and bring Annabel some fancy iced drink, and buy her a nice dress, instead of dressing her in filthy old jeans and abusing her.
I'd done this all before. I knew the score. What was the matter with me? For pity's sake what the hell was the matter with me?

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