After many months, probably tipping over into the one year plus category, I have finally constructed a raised bed for Mrs T and I to enjoy and grow stuff, who knows what. So the stolen sleepers used to form the edge of a frankly botched together pathway within our estate. The previous builders were a bunch of charlatans and cut corners where ever they saw one, they’d look for corners in a möbius band which I think would just confuse matters. So this path with sleeper kerning was down for a matter of weeks before the taste and tidiness police showed up and took the builders to task ordering them to remove the sleepers presumably to replace them with something else, which I’m sure they have but can not remember as I don’t walk there often, I do take notice of stuff but I haven’t of this weirdly, maybe I need to up my game.

Anyway I’ve been promising Mrs T a raised bed for a long time, and I don’t mean a bunk bed, so finally, on one of the hottest weekends of the year ever, I decided to manually saw the sleepers, manually sand the sleepers and manually screw and fashion the sleepers together, leaving a small gap at the top right hand corner, where a family of field mice might nestle, ever one to provide for the animals, unless they happen to be slugs or flying insects, which I would happily crush, aside from Bees and possibly ladybirds, thinking about it I’d happily crush flies, wasps and hornets, mosquitoes and midges, the rest can live, apart from cockroaches. Look the point is, I’ve made a very heavy structure adjacent to in situ, so if and when I have to move it, I’ll get my pals round and shunt it onto the uneven pile of concrete and cement which I have taken from the bottom of my garden, where the builders left it loosely covered in soil and weeds. These random pieces of hardcore (not that kind) will act as drainage and I will tell anyone who asks they are solid foundations in disguise. And believe me when my drinking pals come to help me shift it, the questions as to why `I haven’t laid a proper foundation base will be flowing like water from our persistently leaking kitchen tap.

Having stolen the sleepers the only cost was my time, which on a Saturday amounts to not much more than the minimum wage, and the cost of the screws and other metal add ons. The fact I had to drive about  a 50 mile round trip in my daughters car without air con on the hottest afternoon ever to get to B&Q is neither here of there and can be written off for tax purposes, plus I get marriage tax breaks because I have created something relatively impressive, so who’s winning now?