My kingdom for a nail

Today started off like any other rainy Friday morning: another week of activities almost done, no where to be until later in the day, baby sleeping and a lovely cake in the oven. Somewhere over in Mont Albert a concreter was getting ready to perform the site cut for the Homemade House. Peace reigned.

Just as I was about to welcome my excellent friend Mrs Harris for a cuppa, the phone rang. It was the concreter burbling over with the news that not only did I inexplicably not need a site cut but in fact the site would need significant building up, lots more concrete, lots more money, and they were all knocking off for the day to celebrate these facts.

I could feel my frontal lobe grinding its gears as I tried to absorb all of this information. "R..I..g..h..t," I said, and then spent the next 20 minutes trying to grasp technical information sprinkled with numbers that meant utterly nothing to me. To his credit, Frank the Concreter did his best to explain that a certain nail in the fence put there by the land surveyor during set out was somehow indicating that our slab was going sit 600mm out of the ground. That is quite high, my friends, quite high.

I greeted Mrs Harris at the door, wild-eyed and flushed, the morning's peace well and truly gone. My mind was racing as I explained to her that I didn't know which of the contributors to that nail's position to call or even what I needed to ask. Mrs Harris set to with the contour survey map, the slab design, and the house plans. I kid you not, she knows what those numbers mean - and lo, before too long her suspicions had been aroused.

So I called the Lovely Building Company once, twice, thrice. I called the land surveyor. I placated the concreter. A hot potato was clearly being passed around. But by afternoon's end, that potato had found its rightful home - all I cared was that it was not in MY lap and I could save any hot angry tears for another time.

That special little set out nail has descended from on high, site works will re-commence shortly, and Mrs Harris may get the slab named after her.