Graham Denby column: Round in circles

Nov 25 2009 by Graham Denby

WE said goodbye to our ‘work-aways’ Tony and Sam last week. The time we’ve had them here has flown by and Ruth says: ‘You know, we’ve done a whole winter’s work in just five weeks!’ I’d like to think that means I can take the rest of the year off and the first three months of 2010 ... yeah, right!

Besides clearing the land of the shrubs (stevas) which were all burned very carefully in a home made oil-drum brazier, barrow loads of dug-up stones were hauled off the new paddock and finally the outer fencing was fixed as well as circling the new ménage area.

Now when Ruth said we needed to consider a ménage, I waited for the remaining two words to be added – ‘a trois’ ... and I’m still waiting! Apparently a ménage is a dedicated area where horses go round and round in circles – a lot like my Christmas shopping experiences, I guess!

The ménage surface had been roughly laid with the debris from the excavations for the house construction.

Helder, our builder, had his site wagons tip in this particular area and the excavator trundled over to spread and level it all properly.

Methinks there was some ménage aforethought here from our Ruth!

We have had to build a couple of corners up where the land fell away quite steeply down to the access track, excavate for and fix the surrounding poles, run the barrier tape around and it was all prepared for the top smooth surface-laying sometime next year.

How wrong can you be?