In which there is mostly woodwork

It’s the summer holidays!

“It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in “It’s a nice day,” or “You’re very tall,” or “So this is it, we’re going to die.” His first theory was that if human beings didn’t keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this–“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.” (Mr. Adams)

We have been to visit the Man in the Shed’s parents.  Last year he told them he was going to build a tree house in their hazel tree, I’m not sure if he got their permission first but they haven’t dismantled it yet. We didn’t quite finish it before the weather got soggy again and mostly ignored it all winter (except for the bit when it might have been going to snow and they added extra reinforcing to allow for heavy snow on the roof) so last month we finally got around to put some finishing touches on it and learnt how to tie net knots to that we don’t have to get the big ladders out every time someone wants to go up there.

Click on the pictures to enbiggificate.

Some crazy person (can’t imagine who) suggested to Small that he could sleep up there if he liked so the Man in the Shed and I spent one night up there each with him (mental note: bring camping mat next time), after first sweeping very thoroughly and checking and double checking that we had swept out all our eight legged friends with the dustpan and brush.

Both Small and Tiny managed to climb up there ok with a bit of help and had loads of fun playing with the bucket and pulley. I should probably explain that the Man in the Shed’s Dad is the person out of all the people I know who has the most sheds with the most useful things in them like spare (until he wants to use them for something) pulleys, rope and buckets, oh, and most of the materials and tools to build a tree house.

It also means that when Small says, ‘Can you make me a bed for Fred?’ (Fred is a small and furry creature of ursine nature who is living up to his name by being not as fluffy as he used to be) they can vanish into the shed for half a day and return with this:

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Two things you should know: One, it is not finished (Fred has lots of abilities but he has not yet mastered levitation) – they ran out of time and two, there is another one but it hasn’t been assembled yet – they decided to make it bunk beds. Oh and somebody probably needs to knit him a bedspread. Three things you should know: it is not finished, is bunk beds, needs some bedding and  has nice red uniforms…ah, no, wait, that’s something else.