12-13 April 2003

A report by Mark Antony “Mk2” Richardson
Photo by Alan Lines & Ed Walker

Just for once, I’ll try and keep this short, and not burble on about what happened in the days immediately before the dig, whose car was behaving oddly, beer, etc, etc, etc. 

For me, there was only one way to deal with the excitement of a forthcoming dig in a constructive manner, and that was to go to the new builders merchants near my office on the Thursday lunchtime and purchase my own hard hat, and (at last!) some new gloves. Now go back and read the first paragraph, Mark. Oops. 

We were detailed to arrive at or after 10pm, with beer. This was comparitive luxury for me; I had time to throw my kit into the car leisurely, and even to scrape the remains of the last dig off my awful boots befire heading Herefordward, stopping only to purchase a quantity of Crčme Eggs, it being Nearly Easter. I did this in Hereford Tescos, where the usual “one in front service” was to be found: there was one checkout open and it was in front of me. A kindly local woman turned around and said “D’you waaaant ter goo in frant of mee, with thoose eggggs?”, which I thought was nice. Now go back and read the first paragraph again, Mark. Double Oops. 

The accommodation was a rather picturesque Victorian village hall, which I found parked behind Beastie, aka Marcus’ Land Rover. Marcus himself I found parked in front of a large woodburning stove, which he had stoked up big-style. I sat quietly sweating, drinking a beer and eating the remains of the pepperoni pizza I had done for tea, which considering Marcus doesn’t drink and is vegetarian was most polite of me (not). Eventually, after a cross-country kit-borrowing marathon of epic proportions, NJF arrived and several other members of London wrg were surgically removed (Sally via a collision with the roof) and filled with beer for convalescent purposes. 

Oh canals? You want me to talk about canals? Well, the site was on the outskirts of Hereford (behind South Hereford Garages, should you feel like having a nosey) on a stretch of barely-in-water canal. Of course, the parts that appeared to not be in water were in fact sodden to a depth of, well, at least one welly, and several members of the crew were stricken as they attempted to cross the canal to the towpath side. Even after Richard Cool and Andi had tested the mud, Sal still had to have a go herself just to make sure. Now you will be thrilled to know that chivalry is Officially Not Dead in London wrg. Ed sprung to the rescue, and promptly got a wellyful of black goop himself whilst pulling Sally out. His walk carried a 50% squelch for the rest of the day. 

The first task, which covered much of the work site, was to remove a number of stumps. Some of these were flippin’ yooge, so a tractor was brought in to assist. It was at this point that Marcus had a great idea. In addition to fetching building materials and dropping them to site, Beastie could be driven into the field adjoining the towpath, hitched-up Tirfor-style to the big stumps via a chain, and driven off with the stump being left with no choice but to follow. This “automotive Phill Cardy” arrangement proved most useful, and judging by the occasional manic grin from Marcus, quite good fun too. 

The second task was to extend an outfall, via a culvert, across the towpath so that the path could be reinstated above it. The grille was removed from the old frontage of the outfall and put to one side whilst Matt worked on the formwork which would enable us to place a concrete slab as a “roof” across the existing concrete “floor and sides”. Ed put the new London wrg Stihl saw to good use cutting up some scrap metal sheeting to use as the “ceiling” for the slab. I can testify, having used it to cut some steel rods to length, that this is one Really Useful Engine, and well worth its purchase price. Sal and I, meanwhile, arranged said steel rods in a pretty pattern in the grass, and somehow ended up with a steel reinforcement lattice for the slab in exactly the right dimensions. In true wrg fashion, it was entirely held together with cable ties. 

Another little joblet that was progressing nicely was to remove the barbed wire from the fence which closed off the towpath, and then remove said fence in order to extend the site right up to an infilled section above where we were working. Richard duly removed the concrete fence post, and it was, erm, duly put to good use. 

Lunchbreak was taken back at the mobile dentists’ office (!) and involved numerous cakey and chocolatey items. Quote of the day, 1: Lesley (with lunch in hard hat): “I’ve got one ham sandwich and one tuna sandwich, so why do I have a cheesey helmet?” Quote of the day, 2: Richard (appropriating a cherry Bakewell): “I don’t like glace cherries.” Ed: “I’ll take your cherry, Richard!” Richard: “Gulp…” 

Later, the outfall job continued with Sal taping down polythene sheeting (disguised as a load of opened-out bin bags) onto the formwork to get ready for the concrete pour. So was Matt, but he wasn’t using quite as much tape as Sal… A very helpful local resident (thank you, sir!) had allowed not only the H&G folks to have the materials dropped on his driveway, but also us to use his 200-litre water butt and electricity socket. And may I say now, publicly, how sorry I am for breaking the plastic handle off said water butt, shortly after realising the reason why the water was pouring in but the bucket wasn’t filling up (see: lyrics which go “dear Liza, dear Liza). By the way, when removing the bricks from the trailer, do not take out the ones ballasting the thing first, Mk2! 

So, concrete made (with slightly arthritic mixer) poured and site made safe (or so we thought) it was time to wander back and see how the rest of the site looked. It looked like a Bob had hit it, of course! So back into NJF and off to the accomm where the delicious, garlicky smell of lasagne, being prepared by chief cook and bottlewatcher Martin Floodgates, met us at the door. It then mingled with the smell of the mud (see: wellyful, above) with less than pleasant results in the nostril department. 

We were soon enjoying several panfuls of lovely lasagne and broccoli, washed down with whatever we could get our hands on. In my case it was wine in one hand and beer in the other. This was followed by a most gooey treacle tart, with washing-up  consequently needing to be tackled in shifts. Not Welsh But Lives There Paul joined us just in time for a trip to a highly recommended pub, which didn’t have Trumpet in the name and wasn’t in the direction in which Adrian (for he had also materialised) was driving the bus. Once it was found the beer was discovered (by me at least) to be pretty ropey – did anyone have a pint of Woods that wasn’t cloudy and freezing? – so I rectified the situation back at the hall by having some bottled stuff. 

The next morning, we encountered Bristol Paul on the road to site, and recruited him to the gang. I hope he meant to be there! We re-opened the concreting site to find a log and two bricks had been lovingly thrown into the wet concrete raft. I say lovingly because the “artist” was so proud of his “efforts” that he had signed them. Jason, wherever you are, there is a canal restoration project somewhere just waiting for you to become a permanent structural part of it. I’ll hold you down by the neck whilst Matt and Ed pour the concrete. 

Matt restored the damage done by dear Jason and removed the formwork whilst Martin inspected the bricklaying task. We took it in turns to backfill the hole with earth, and a group effort involving the linking of arms saw to packing it down into a vaguely towpath-shaped arrangement. 

Lunchbreak saw even more cakey, chocolatey and donutty items being consumed than Saturday. Afterwards, as manic Tirforing continued throughout the site, Martin built a brick dooberry resembling a pizza oven on the front of the outfall, in local red bricks and blue engineering examples. Into this the grille was re-instated. A new site closure was built using Heras fencing instead of ‘orrible barbed wire. The tools were cleaned up using a handy tap (I hope the factory doesn’t view their CCTV footage every Monday morning!) and puzzled over whose strop was whose whilst Sal (very) carefully reversed NJF around to pick up the kit. 

Back at the hall, goop-covered clothing was removed, the floor was swept to within and inch of Andi’s ability to breathe (sorry, Andi – I think we may have been a touch over-zealous) and numerous minutes were spent peering into the engine bay of Sleepy Dave’s Golf, which was acting strangely again, this time by not breaking down. 

Oh, and the hall now has a log pile which is the envy of the parishoners.

Mark Antony “Mk2” Richardson