Badger Towers

Saturday 27th March

Clutching rubble sacks and a tarpaulin from Wickes Mrs Badger and I resume our hectic schedule at the customarily hectic 2pm.  We shovel the plasterboard into the sacks, each of which is hard enough to carry on its own without being in a 1 tonne bag. Schoolboy error averted.

I look up at the lath and see white fuzz and some black bits. Shit. Dry rot. If there’s one thing I didn’t want to find in this house it’s dry rot. The ground floor joists and boards looked good so we thought we’d escaped it. Seems not.  Dry rot is a fungus which creeps along wood, gaps, conduit etc. and is apparently very bad news. [Top DIY background information supplied by Badger Industries Inc.]

My crowbar comes out again and I start yanking down all the lath, bringing more of the 35+ year old detritus with me, this time onto the thoughtfully laid out tarpaulin supplied by Mrs Badger.  Doesn’t take long to clear this job up, that’s for sure.  I have another urge to BURN THINGS but without much clearance in the garden I can’t really set light to all this lath, which is much like kindling. Shame.

Some bits of the Oxford Journal newspaper come down with the plaster and I take a breather to read it in the garden. The date is 1975. I was one year old then which means I’m only 4 years away from being 40. I remember my parents being 40 and joking about “life begins at 40”. My sister Mia, who died in January this year, didn’t make it past 43. She doesn’t get older now. Soon I’ll overtake her. Time passes quickly, but we’re so busy making plans for the future that we miss the point.  You need to enjoy this bit, here, now. After a few tears I recall the words of Ferris Bueller:

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it”

So far this house has refused to give up anything datable prior to 1975. It gives a great sense of perspective to know that it was at least 60 years old when this “old” stuff was left. The paint is probably the oldest thing here apart from the structure of the building and floorboards, yet so many lives have passed through, all with their brilliant ideas about how to renovate and improve it. We’re just the 2010 caretakers. We’d better do a good job.

Pub? Yeah, ok.

Found today:

Dry Rot (see above)

Woodworm in the joists

Oxford Journal from 1975