[FLYING BANANA]

................................... of being trusted with someone else's front door key. People I hardly know, I might have been here in the house almost 16 months but do people really know me or do I really know them. Felt it was a great privilege to be asked as they have family living in town. They both work at the local school and it would have been difficult for either of them to pop home to take the delivery in.

So Gerry dropped the front door key off last night. The instructions were that Gerry would phone me when the delivery company contacted him and were ready to deliver between 08.00 & 11.00, Now I have the builders in, new decking going down where the eyesore, greenhouse, was. So I would have to let them know that I would be missing for a short time. But they are a couple of great lads and they can be trusted.

So Gerry phoned me at 09.45 and said the delivery was on its way. So armed with the front door key, and my face shield I set off across the road. Didn't have long to wait before the wagon pulled up. Neither the driver or his mate had masks on, so I kept out of there way. The box was huge, again I kept out of the way whilst they deposited the box in the lounge. They made a note of my name and was gone.

I locked up and came home. Time to put the kettle on for our tea break. The lads, bless them, have worked bloomin' hard getting the ground ready for the decking to go down. 8 support posts have been concreted in. This is to bring the decking up level with the lawn. No steps for me to slip down or trip up. The lads are local and both live in Saltash and have been running their own business for about three years. All types of building work undertaken except for plumbing or electrical. But this work is carried out by another company.

The work is now finished and I'm well pleased with the job. They cleared up each day and took all the rubbish away. In fact when they left you would never think that anyone had been there. I did get a couple of estimates from a couple of other companies, but this team were the only ones who said that the rubbish clearance was included in the price. One company wanted an extra £200 to take the rubbish away.

On October 1st my new neighbour moved in next door. A very nice lady with her two children an her boyfriend. She is going through a messy divorce at the moment. Been living with her mum since her marriage came to an end.
She is a manager for a care home company that specialises in care in your own home. Be an idea to inquire for future reference for me. Her boyfriend works but no idea what he does. Nice friendly chap parks his Focus in the space where I used to park the Bear.

Until I can get the troublesome tree sorted out I'm parking Bear behind Banana out in the street. The lady has one of those huge Mini's.
When OxfordBlue75 sold his car he had a load of spares to sell and Ravinder up in Fife bought a load including 5 wheels, Ravinder asked me if I would store everything till he could arrange collection. I said yes but then found out that another member had been storing stuff for over 2 months for Ravinder.
Hoping it wouldn't be that long before collection.

But after a couple of false starts a friend of Rav's has collected all the spares from me plus the other forum member. That has emptied the garage a bit. Need to get rid of the wood and sitting up in the corner is a complete Rover 75 interior, it belongs to Allen. Will need to have a chat with him about it going.
I have also gutted my back garden. I have taken 11 large canvas bags to the tip so far, still more to shift. There was a troublesome stump that needed to come out of the ground.

I still had Allen's pickaxe, the type that has a point at one end and a blade on the other side. That will get the stump out of the ground. So into the garage I went to get it. It was at the back of the other garden tools. But instead of me moving the other tools out of the way, I decided to lift it out. Bad move as I lifted it out I unseated the hedge trimmer, a G-Tech cordless, from its bracket. Luckily for me the blades had the plastic cover on. Still it gave me a hefty whack on the head. I might have mumbled a few choice words.

Only a red mark where it had contacted with my head, but a bruise did appear a few days later on. But the pickaxe done its job and the stump came out, eventually.
So other than a couple of trips out to Tavistock plus shopping trips I have been staying in.
Been buying damaged models off of eBay to repair. 3 Bentley Exp Le Mans cars. Made 1 good one out of them. Rescued a MG Metro 4R6, which had loose seats and no steering wheel. That is repaired.

Got 3 large, 1/16th scale models coming, 2 Bentley Exp Le Mans cars, both damaged. And a MGB GT which has paint issues and a broken axle. So more winter projects are keeping me busy.

A few photos of the decking work.

Will catch up with most of you next year. Stay Safe and thanks for reading and the kind comments.