Knocked

When we moved down country in 1996, we secured the services of a pair of well-drilling brothers who lived not 2 km from us. They came and scoped the contract and said that [no way not in a million years] they couldn't get their rig into the yard through the original pair of wrought-iron gates. They were wide enough but the turn was too tight. That put Project Borehole back a couple of weeks until John-the-Digger, the well-drillers' brother-in-law, found us one JCB-day in his busy schedule. John opened up a swooping new entrance at the bottom of the yard across which we hung a 14ft = 4.25m gate. So far so good 20thC. Our borehole bottomed out at 113ft = 35m and has been doing well, with some maintenance, since. 

Over the following ~30 years, we've had to trick about with our new-no-more farm entrance to accommodate the ever bigger Tonka toys of various contractors: No, please don't send that gravel in a truck with a 40ft = 12m wheel-base. We have a vigorous stand of cherry laurel Prunus laurocerasus just south of the gate which grows Up and then droops down under the weight of foliage - very annoying because there's nothing big enough to prop a ladder up against to trim t'buggers. The traditional hay meadow is ready to cut any time after the end of June, which would require access for mowers, tedders, balers and tractor-trailers stacked two high with bales. On 3rd July, I bit the bullet and knocked [felled out] the gate-overhanging laurels at their base [as above R]. This gave the boys and their toys [same crew as last year + pics!] a clean sweep when they came along 10 days later to 'knock' [technical term] the hay and take it off site.

Unfortunately, one of the contractors [nobody owned up, let alone apologized, let alone undertook to make good] knocked the granite gate pillar at the entrance to the hay-meadow. When I went out to check that all the bales had been removed, I found the pillar all-ahoo and leaning out into the gateway. This is ungood because, at the best of times, the gap is 12ft less 2in and these modern machines are 12ft less 6in wide. The smart way to true up the gate pillar is to reculer pour mieux sauter hoik it out entirely; dig a new hole and reset. If I had a tractor with a front-loader at my disposal, that's what I would do.

But I don't, so I gathered up m'tools - a big iron bar, a small ditto, secateurs, trowel . . . table-spoon - and cleaned out the dirt behind the pillar down to about 25cm. Secateurs to cut back the roots. Before starting The Dig, I had to c a r e f u l l y remove the loose stones piled up against the ditch and fallen from the wall - all of which the granite pillar had been supporting. Remove one stone and two more will become loose etc. When I was bored scooping out the dirt, I leaned my arse against the pillar and it shifted to almost upright. I got on my knees again and gave it another round of scraping and scooping; and another dunt with my soft-hammer. Eventually - Good enough! I found and hammered home some wedge-shaped shale rocks to stop the pillar canting forward again and job done.