Grunt Grunt

Most of today has been spent moving chunks of granite around my garden and trying to figure out how to jigsaw them into the hole where the door was. We're having to trim some which is bloody messy work involving grinding slots into the bits we don't want and hitting them with big hammers till they fall off. Very dusty and messy. Dead Neolithic. Pa knapped a small rock to make it fit a space. Held it in his hand and whacked its edge with a hammer till it was the right size for what he wanted. As I watched him I thought "That's one of the first things people ever did that made them human. Someone held a rock and hit it to make it a different shape. 4 million years of evolution later and we're still doing the same thing. Still hitting rocks." This isn't an original thought. I have it quite often - but it's still a true source of wonderment to me.

I also rediscovered today the heather smells nice. I was raiding the rockery for a triangular bit about "that big" when I became aware of a wonderful, very nostalgic smell. I was scrabbling about under on of the heathers which are in flower at the moment and the aroma was wonderful.

At the end of the day we have one row of blocks in. The doorway has been filled to a hight of 8 inches! (We are working in Imperial this week not Metric 'cos Pa is doing the 'working out what we need to do next' and he "doesn't do Metric" unless forced to. And sometimes it's just easier, though I don't admit that to him. This building was built in Imperial measurements and all the spare rocks and slates we have been using were all cut to Imperial measurements and well, let's face it 8" is a lot easier to remember than 203mm.)

Tomorrow we are going to put another row in. I unearthed a HUGE piece of dressed granite in the pile that ill do almost an entire course by itself. If we don't use it tomorrow there is no way we are going to be able to safely lift it high enough to use. I've been gathering every bit of dressed and semi-dressed granite I have found for years now and dumping them in my garden on the off chance that one day I would need them. Over the years I have collected quite a pile, all overgrown now with couchgrass and moss. Well, the day to use them has finally arrived. The first thing I did today was roll over one of the largest rocks in the collection to measure the face on the other side. I rolled it over onto a tussock of grass that wasn't a tussock of grass at all but another bloody great lump of granite with grass growing over the top of it. A fact that became painfully apparent as I mashed my left pinky between the two . Blood, swearing, and severe pain. Great way to start the day.