The garden money pit...

I can't believe that yesterday I paid £8.99 for each of two pots of what I call "dune grass" although I concede that it is probably not dune grass and probably has a proper latin name, nevertheless it is grass, two pots of grass that I bought yesterday - and then I bought another, smaller pot of grass for £3.99.

If you'd have told me 20 years ago, 20 years ago when I was living on the north east coastline, that I would hand over £22 of my hard earned money for something that we considered to be a bloody nuisance back then, something that I could have ventured out of my gate, armed with a shovel, and dug up acres of the stuff for free, then I would have questioned your, and my, sanity.

Its all in aid of our new decking chill out zone, built around the new semi-above-ground pond, its an on going project that has no plan, I'm making it up as I go along and have no idea how big its going to be.

Yesterday I completed a 10 foot square section and to my eyes there is nothing quite so beautiful as wood in the garden - Suzanne's first thought on viewing my masterpiece was "it looks like a dance floor" and later that evening when the solar powered led lights on the front line of the deck had illuminated, I invited her on there for a dance - for the first time in 27 years I asked my wife for a dance (I don't dance), and she refused, calling me "a daft bugger" - so I won't be asking her to dance again in a hurry.

Picked up a remarkable bargain for the decking planks in B&Q - a few weeks ago when I bought the planks for the pond they had two grades, the standard one at £5.99 for a 2.4 metre plank and a cheaper one at £3.99 - obviously I went for the cheaper one.

Saturday when I returned for some more they only had the one grade and despite the fact that it looked suspiciously like the more expensive version they had a huge big sign above it stating that it was on a special offer at £3.99, I bought 16 planks.

Got to the checkout and with a few other items the bill came to £132, pushed the trolley to the car and puzzled over the maths, it seemed wrong, checked the bill and sure enough they'd charged me £5.99 a plank, returned to the store and found a manager of some sort who listened to me and then explained that the decking was indeed £5.99 and why did I think it was £3.99, I led him gently by the arm and pointed to the fekkin huge big sign that said "Special offer £3.99" above said planks, he pulled the sign down from the shelf to reveal the £5.99 price tag, and to his, and B&Q's eternal credit he signed off a credit on my mastercard for £32.

Came back out of the store to where Suzanne was standing and gleefully told her of my good fortune and how I wished I'd bought 20 planks now to which she pointed out that I'd dropped myself in it as I still need at least three times as much timber to finish the deck - I'm going to have to buy the £5.99 stuff now to complete it - bugger.

Still, I now have a garden dance floor, even though my wife won't dance in the moonlight with me, and a planted area to one side of it with dune grass waving fiercely in the breze, I've never known a house be so affected by wind before - thats what you get for buying one on top of a hill.


PS - the next thing on the purchase list from B&Q is a two foot high laughing buddha, to be sat amongst the dune grass so that I can invite Suzanne to sit cross legged and "ooooommmmm" with me one night, we'll be getting a reputation for wierdness among the neighbours soon.


PPS - tomorrow I am summonsed to appear in the Crown Court as a witness - so that will be fun .