double handling

Ah yes. The controversial issue of 'double handling' - the process of going to a great deal of effort to do a job - then re-doing it a few weeks or months later. Last winter we spent days building some very impressive wood piles from the trees we'd cut down only to have to take them all down and rebuild them a few feet away so that we could build the new garage. Unforeseen circs BB says. Bad planning I say.

The trench for the telephone line is another case in point - except this time it was 'triple handling'. We initially paid someone to dig it to put in the water pipe to the new house, thinking it would be cheaper and less hassle than doing it ourselves. Wrong. It was the first (and last) time we've hired someone to do something BB is (semi) capable of doing. 'Digger operator' was obviously low on the list of Matey Boy's job skills because as I sat at the upstairs window working at my computer, a dark shadow in the form of an out-of-control digger careered down the slope towards me and the (badly rotting) column holding up the roof. I came within an inch of ending up in the bucket under a collapsed roof. For weeks afterwards our front garden resembled the aftermath of the Battle of the Somme.

To get electricity to the garage across the road, BB had to re-dig the same trench a few months ago but it turned out his digger operator skills weren't much better than Matey Boy's because he hit the water pipe and this time we ended up with a swimming pool in the front garden. I was blamed for not being his banksman, even although I was out of the country at the time. He summed up the episode over the phone with: " Cock-up! Arse! Wet!". He's a man of few words, BB.

This last - or should I say third - time (because you never know!) there were no dramas but it now looks like we're building a motorway through our property, such is the state of the garden.