I have always been astonished at the notion the brain can be re-taught how to do things. My last ‘Aunt’ died recently after eight years of living after a stroke. She began her post-stroke life pretty speechless and almost totally unable to do anything for herself. That event happened just prior to her eightieth birthday but with diligence and support she got back to a level of independent living as well as regaining her speech and thought processes.
I have noticed how my brain prevents me from doing simple things that would result in some painful accidents. For example, my right knee is now extremely useless and cannot bear my weight in a bent position, such as lowering myself to kneel on it or pushing myself back up from a sitting or kneeling position (if I even get there!). It is quite a surreal feeling, one half of the brain tells me the only way to get under the Land Rover is to kneel and then lie on the ground whilst the other half stops me and gets me to think about how best to do it so as not to damage my joint or cause pain.
This past week I have had to allow my (ponderous thinking) brain to take over my (subconscious, automaton) brain. I was working at the end of the wall that runs down the steep slope; the angle at the bottom must be around fifty degrees. What’s more, the days of incessant rain and the constant passage of hundreds of sheep had turned the work area into a quagmire. All in all it was a dangerous place in which to try to build a 1.6 metre high cheek-end (the term used for the end of the wall). One thing that I must never do, must fight instinct, must concentrate, is not to cross my legs. Allowing one foot to cross to the other side is an absolute guarantor of a heavy slip with no chance of controlling the downfall. On the positive side there was, at least, plenty of stone although as there had not been a cheek-end there previously – the wall continued for another fifteen metres or so to the road – there were not many stones that had nice right-angled corners with which to construct the perfect pillar.
The dangers were many; firstly, the problem of standing on such a steep slope which was basically a mud-slide. As soon as a large stone gets picked up the centre of gravity of the body changes significantly and can add just sufficient enough imbalance to send one’s feet slipping off down the slope resulting in a calamitous fall. Secondly and probably the most alarming and constant concern is the likelihood that the standing part of the wall will decide that gravity is too much to resist and it comes crashing down upon you. Oh yes, that is a constant worry, it happens often on a steep slope. Already several of the gaps which the machine driver cleared out for me have grown extensively, on the up side !
I won’t labour the issue for you, suffice to say I did enough labouring over the two days it took me to build the new end. Because of the steepness of the slope it is necessary to cut into the sub soil or rock as was the case here, and create a level building platform. The stones have to be placed horizontally to prevent any temptation for them to slip off down the hill. As the wall is over one and a half metres high I decided that it was safer to build a stepped top so as to reduce the pressure on the end stones which would be created once the new section was joined to the old. In essence two wall ends are built which give, in my view anyway, added strength.
The first lift which takes the new section to a height where it joins the bottom of the old wall, was reasonably easy, notwithstanding the mud and slips, as I had some level ground on which to stand. Once I had to move up the wall a little the slope became treacherous not least because where the digger had cut into the bank there were vertical drops of half a metre or so. More than enough to wreck my dodgy knees or twist an ankle or two. Eventually, by the end of the first day, I had got to the top of the first cheek end and with some feeling of success but with extremely aching lower joints, I set off to my new ‘home in hills’.
I now have a nice little caravan in which to stay whilst I’m working on this job. It has been placed inside one of the large, empty sheep sheds which the farmer has on this particular piece of land (although he lives some miles away) and there I have a mains electric connection and water. Being inside protects the caravan from the weather and gives me a dry space in which to get rid of my mud caked outer garments. I am actually quite enjoying it and already I am thinking I might be joining the ranks of those awful folk who clog up our roads every summer, with their white boxes in train. Maybe the joys of holidays under canvas (or nylon as it now tends to be) are going to give way to a more sedate and luxurious kind of touring – maybe …
The following day I really had to be careful as a fine drizzle had set in which made both the mud and the grass even more hazardous. By around mid afternoon I had finished the section, much to my relief. That slope is not somewhere I want to be, especially right at the bottom end for, at the close of play, which usually comes when I have totally consumed my energy ration for the day, I then have to ascend several hundred feet to get to the track that leads ‘home’. It is extraordinary how heavy an empty thermos flask and lunch-box can be at four in the afternoon.
The newly built ‘cheek-end’ with the stepped top to spread the load of the wall pushing constantly against it – I don’t want to be going back to re-build it !
So, onwards and upwards, there’s a few small sections which whilst currently still standing, really need to be stripped out and rebuilt or else they could crash down just after I leave. Then I get to work on a reasonably flat piece of ground. Alas the merry month of October has flown by and I have missed my target of getting this particular wall finished – but only by a week. The worst thing is going to be the early onset of darkness now that we’ve moved into GMT. I don’t relish the thought of being tucked up in my little metal box by half past four in the afternoon, nice as it is …
Apart from the problem of that particular project other walls have been quietly coming along. Two jobs that have been occupying my time back home, for several months actually, are nearing the end. One has been for the daughter of a long-standing customer of mine and has involved some seriously heavy stones and some seriously large tonnage. It has been a rebuild, of sorts, for there was a wall there previously but it was a lime-mortar built wall and hence was not particularly wide nor were the stones really suitable for a dry stone wall. Stones that are used in a mortared wall tend to be much shorter in terms of the length to which they penetrate the heart of the wall. Thus it was necessary to import some ‘real’ stones as this was definitely going to be a ‘real’ wall ! (I often chuckle to myself at the memory of the lady who came running up to me whilst I was building a roadside wall and asked “Is that a REAL wall!?”).
The stone used was therefore a mish-mash of previously used ‘sheep’s-head’ stones (so called because of their intrinsic shape) and large silica blocks. Some of the stones from the old wall still retained their covering of lime-wash – the previous occupant of the farm house, a dear friend of mine who had lived there since the war years, was nothing if not ‘yard’ proud and the walls and buildings got an annual washing of white lime.
I have to confess that I was not at all confident the stones which the current occupier (of the recently converted barn) wanted me to use would result in a wall that would ‘stand looking at’. The foundation stones were extremely heavy and I struggled for several days to get the 25 metres laid. Then I just plodded on -and on and on – for what seemed to be an interminable duration, mainly at weekends as I was engaged elsewhere with various projects. However both the number of days and the end product were not so terrible as I had foreseen and the customer was extremely pleased with his massive boundary wall. I wanted it to be something to be pleased about as it is going to be there a long time, is going to be looked at and most importantly, was done for the daughter (and son-in-law) of one of my longest and loyal customers.
Having completed that little job I then had to do a completely different task for them. A concrete block retaining wall runs the length of the front of the barn at about a metre in height. It is without doubt unsightly but functional. I was asked to face it with a dry stone wall to match the boundary wall. Alas that meant I would have to secure the face wall to the block wall somehow and that meant the dreaded cement mortar. I have something of a mental block about mixing mortar; it’s not that I object to it in principle, it’s more the nuisance of having to mix the damned stuff. My daughter when she was in school, used to get her friends telling her that the reason her dad built dry stone walls was because he was too lazy to mix cement. There may have been a certain truth in that !
The horrid concrete block wall is hidden, hooray ! The ‘trompe l’oeil’ that is the dry stone face wall is secured by the product from that horrid orange machine on the right.
I like it when I can cross off another job that’s been hanging over me for a long while. Only three to go !! The other one I want to show you is a small repair on a section of wall at the farm where my collection is housed and where I have done several repairs already over the years. This time the whole wall was hidden under a bush of ivy and it took several sessions of chain-sawing, hacking and tugging to clear it away. Once the collapse was revealed I could clear way the soil which had accumulated, mainly composted leaves from the surrounding sycamores. What was revealed was the best demonstration I have ever encountered of why you should never let ivy take hold in a wall.
The main root had wormed its way through the innards of the wall, the size was astonishing. Look at the thickness and length of it and the huge root ball sitting atop the gate pillar. There really is no space inside a dry stone wall for an intruder (or there shouldn’t be if the hearting is packed correctly and this wall was a well built wall in that respect) so any ‘wood forming’ plant will inevitably only be accommodated in the centre of a wall by pushing stones outwards – and outwards and outwards until, ultimately, the wall crashed down.
This is how big the Ivy root was once I had cut it out -around 3 metres in length and very serpent like in appearance. “Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness so soon did lose its seat” …
Ironically, it is often the case that such invasive, creeping plants become the only support that keeps the wall standing. It is a constant conundrum for organisations charged with preserving our historic built environment; to remove the dreaded ivy (for it is usually ivy that is the great destroyer) and allow the wall to fall, leave the ivy and let the wall, eventually, fall – to do or not to do, that is the question.
This autumn has, for all its rain and high winds, been a great year for one of my very favourite growing things. I find fungi quite the most fascinating of living organisms. Not quite so fascinating as does my dear friend Ray who is by far the most infatuated fungition (I made that up, in case you are wondering…) possibly in the universe. When you realise that what we see, the ‘mushroom’, is just the fruit, the tip of the huge underground network of fibrous roots which spreads much farther than we could imagine, it is quite remarkable. Look at just some of the ones I’ve encountered in my work sites:-
The beech tree is a great host for fungii, the the honey fungus runs along the tree’s root system and the lovely giant polypor (meripelus gigantus), reaches a substantial size if left alone.
Perhaps the most interesting encounter this autumn came in the town. I was waiting at my local M.O.T. station in the nearby town of Llandovery and wandered over to a picnic bench to sit down in the morning sunshine. The ground was covered in wind-fall apples emanating from an old tree in the adjacent garden, its branches hanging out over the yard of the garage. To my utter astonishment – not least as they were the first I had seen all summer – the apples were being attended by a large number of butterfly. They seemed to be consuming the soft rotting fruit and clearly suffering the consequences of over indulgence. Alcohol consumption when you are that small is not good for the flying ability of these precious creatures !
Finally, as October gave way to the penultimate month of another year, some bright and crisp days came my way and I managed to get to the top of the slope and finish the cheekend there. So, apart from one small gap for which I have no stone but for which a tractor is promised in order to bring me some, the wall running the slope is completed. Now I can concentrate on getting the next section done before winter really sets in. I’m way above the snow line and if we do get a dose of the white stuff it will be the end of work until it disappears, that would not be good.
I was asked by a friend whether I minded being all alone on the hill and then in the caravan at night … that’s not really something that occurs to me besides, this week Darling Emma called by, climbed the steep slope and brought me pumkin pie on All Hallows Eve and there’s always the fast boys who flash by most days …
They do tend to make a noise though, ah well, Per Ardua Ad Astra, them and me.
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