Give me a solid spot to stand on and I will fail completely

That bastard Archimedes and his stupid theories. As previously detailed, the base to the previous carbuncle, or former extension, at the rear of Large Villas has proven problematic to the point where the Greek's rather flippant remark about levers is demonstrated to be total bunkem. Cheap Steve tried and failed. Next in was Mazzer and JJ, my co-mature student. We came equipped with a diamond tipped gas-powered saw, gauranteed by the rental store owner to make mincemeat of any Concretion within minutes. We also, on the advice of our philosopher friend, had the most sizeable lever we coud find - a 2inch think iron pole, six foot long. Fuelled by our new found friendship, several cups of tea and a few Digestive biscuits, we, unlike Cheap Steve and the boys, came up with a plan, as besuited our new found status as interlectals.

In short, it failed.

The photographs below may help indicate why:














Concreatia, as Joey Mac has unhelpfully dubbed the thing(thus making my act of removal a vengeful thing(by anthromorphizing the monstrosity) and thereby doomed to failure) is constructed as follows, from bottom to top:

One layer of concrete 4" thick, brick and stone mix - Pre-1940's laid on bed of rubble
One layer of concrete 6" thick, smal stone and ballst reinforced laid ontop of aforementioned layer
ONe layer of concrete 6-9" thick, reinforced with rebar and strengthened with granite ballast (small stone between 1/2 to 1" diameter).


THe project is a night mare and caused JJ and myself to declare last Friday at around 6.00pm that it "was about time. Time to start drinking heavily.." The following session had us plot many wild schemes, none of which came to pass and the thing is still there.

Tomorrow I have another crack at it, having surpassed myself in reading for Uni.THe image below shows how it has not progressed since last time.

THe rest of the new pictures in the Ella Street renovation album have been added, some of which show the bathroom mosaics completed, but not grouted. I have not yet ordered this album so it is not dirctly included in this post, but for anyone who is impatient to see the completed mosiac without the benefit of my witty titles, you can simply click on the album form the last renovation updates and the images will be in that album (as it is the same album, only with new images added).


THis weekend Charlayan is coming to visit us, and her and Nel are going to complete work on the bathroom tiling. I look forward to Charlayan's visit, but a little bit of me wishes she was a six foot six man mountain with a need to blow off some steam.

Concretia awaits.