Digging into a hole lot of trouble...

No amount of fiddling about with it was going to remedy the problem – it was done for and a new washing machine was required.

The original delivery time was 7am-7pm on Saturday.

A couple of texts later and it was whittled down to between 9am-10am. Fine, excellent service, but bang goes Saturday morning’s lie in.

Now, you may be the kind of person who is up with the lark at the weekend. Throwing back the duvet to joyfully embrace the day and the wonder of creation.

Fine. I think you’re a lunatic. I’m up in the middle of the night five days a week, so come the weekend I’m not getting up before lunchtime if I can get away with it (FYI – I never get away with it).

The washing machine blokes came and went by 9.30am which left us with the rest of the day which we’d decided to devote to tackling the garden.

Miraculously, it hadn’t rained which meant I could cut the grass. Whilst I was doing that Mrs M decided to “tidy up” a tree and a plant.

Within the blink of an eye both were hacked down to basically their roots with a massive pile of branches ready for someone to take to the dump.

Guess who?

I crammed it all into the back of my car, meaning that would need cleaned out and another job added to the list.

Next was tackling a large patch of earth at the back of the garden. Way back when the teenagers were tinys it was the location of a sandpit, then a swing. Now it’s been lying abandoned and after much deliberation its now going to host plants. I think.

So my job was to dig a trench and turn over all the earth. Turns out I don’t know how to dig a hole. I’ve never dug a hole before, never having been asked and, funnily enough, never having the notion to do so.

Every time I moved some soil, more would just fall in meaning I was infuriatingly just stuck at the same bit.

An expletive-filled rant brought a freshly showered Mrs M out to see what was going on. Taking the spade from me she humiliatingly showed me what to do before handing it back.

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said.

“Suck it up,” she replied before disappearing with the teens to go shopping, leaving me halfheartedly hitting the earth – more like concrete encased in six inches of ice – and looking desperately around the garden for something else to do instead.

Having tried and got nowhere for five minutes I threw the spade aside in a huff and sat down in an existential fug, pondering the futility of my task in hand and wondering what I had done to deserve this utter misery.

I went into the kitchen for a drink and inadvertently trailed some flecks of dirt and grass in my wake which would need cleared up.

Something else mundane to do.

Back I went to the hell hole. I stuck the spade into the “earth” and hit a large stone, causing the spade to rebound and clatter painfully off my ankle. However, so inured was I by this point that I didn’t even bother to get angry. “Yeah, that happened,” I figured.

“You didn’t get it finished?” asks Mrs M, one hour later, back from shopping and denying that they all went for a coffee and cake.

I remain unconvinced.

The hole remains unfinished.