Four-trouser day

On Thursday, I changed my clothes more often than Shirley Bassey on a Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

First, there were the smart-ish work trousers for a meeting in a bank. It went quite well. They offered us a mortgage to cover the new land, and said we can increase it to cover the work necessary to turn the Shrieking Shack into a luxury(ish) shower and toilet facility for our lovely future guests.

(Let me put this another way: I, a Bluddie Peasant on minimum wage, working 30 hours a week, supporting a family of four, have secured a 100%+ mortgage for a bizarre and extremely tiny house with around 8,000 square metres of land, fixed for 20 years at just over 5% interest, for comfortably under 200 euros a month. In late October 2008!)

Then I switched to some fencing trousers. Not the shiny white skin tight jobbies you see in James Bond movies. The dusty black and (now) laughably baggy jeans I used to have to undo when watching the telly.

Yes, like I promised many blogs ago, I’m fencing the land against wild boar and other unwanted incursions and excursions.

After lunch, a change to chainsaw trousers necessitated by the running out of suitably thin acacia fenceposts. Fortunately, the previous owner had cut down many of the acacia in The Guest Woods (it’s seen as a pest around here – almost entirely poisonous, fast-growing, light-stealing and only really useful for... fenceposts). All I need to do is cut them to size, sharpen them into giant pencils and SLEDGEHAMMER them into holes made by a heavy, pointed crowbar (how fit am I going to be at the end of the winter?).

Finally, after cutting more wood for the voracious woodburner (having finally summoned up the courage to change the chainsaw blade for the first time - which I did successfully, the second time), back into the first set of trousers to pick up some pig food from a co-worker on the evening shift (more on this, later), feed the animals, collect kindling and write this.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to settle down in front of a good movie and a crackling fire, with a reasonably good glass of wine. No change there, then.