Day 109-110. Digger.

Yesterday, excitement at 8 am when a lorry arrives, disgorges a digger, and parks it in front of our house. You may talk of your porsches and jaguars, *we* have a digger, ha ha! But nothing else happens, except Gavin and X poke around a bit.

Today, however, we have action: Harry and an assistant, Jason, arrive. Jason is quite young and gets ordered around by the others to do the menial jobs: as Harry later says (after telling Jason he'll be rodding out the drains tomorrow) "we've all been through that". Soon the house is vibrating to the blows of the digger so we go out for a look: the technique for breaking up concrete driveways is to smash the digger bucket teeth downwards. On the thinner concrete it goes through first time, and can then be ripped up. On the thicker stuff it takes 10-15 blows to get through; but again once through it can be levered up. Impressive.

At the end of the day the concrete is gone, and the first foundation hole is dug, at the back, to about 3' deep. They have found the drainpipe, and there is something about a drain blockage. I try to tell them its probably builders rubble; they try to say its probably sand; one way or another they are going to fix it!