Musings on a misspent youth …

As a young kid I was a natural at almost any sport that involved a ball and a modicum of hand-eye coordination. Thus it was that all through my formative years and even as a young undergraduate university student, my sense of self-worth was entirely related to sport. Sure, I did pretty well academically, but getting great results did not make me feel good in the same way that being recognised as an excellent sportsman did. Consequently, I spent most of my waking moments eating, drinking and breathing sport. All my favourite birthday and Christmas presents related to sport, and other more traditional gifts were left to linger unloved in a dark cupboard somewhere. 

It turns out that I should have paid a lot more attention to the Meccano set that I was given on or around my ninth birthday. Every contemporary of mine was given this iconic construction toy at some time or another. Meccano was invented by Frank Hornby, a visionary Englishman from Liverpool in the late 19th century. Hornby created a system of interlocking metal strips and small nuts and bolts to make a toy crane for his sons.  Realizing the potential of his invention, Hornby patented his idea in 1901 and began producing construction sets for the mass market. Beyond being a fun toy, Meccano is supposed to encourage hands-on learning of engineering principles, problem-solving and spatial reasoning, all skills which passed me by in my sport-mad youth. Big mistake!

This brings me to the main point of this post, which is that this week we built our greenhouse. Cath ordered a greenhouse from a company that specialises in supplying pre-engineered greenhouses that “just” require assembly. Put slightly differently, we became the proud owners of a very large and complex Meccano set – so large in fact that it took half a day of Cath shouting out random numbers like “L04B x 4”, and me frantically scrabbling through 3 huge cardboard boxes to check that said parts were in fact present. By the end of the first day all we had achieved was laying out the base of the greenhouse on our concrete footings, which we had the good sense to have poured for us some time previously. 

Move over Ikea - this is serious

End of day 1 - concrete footings with the base laid out

Day 2 saw us start in earnest with the task of attaching the base to the footings with some wicked looking concrete bolts. Cath had been practicing for some time with her new DeWalt hammer drill, which is capable of drilling holes into concrete. By the end of the day we were elated with the fact that we had something that looked like a structure taking shape. 

Set the phaser to stun ...

End of day 2 - a structure emerges

Unfortunately, windy weather overnight caused a bit of damage, and our first task on day 3 of the project was a bit of repair work. Needless to say, the blustery weather did not abate. I will not try to describe what the day was like but will leave you with this mental image. Suppose you are on a windsurfer in a howling south-westerly; now double your sail size and try riding the board while standing on a ladder! In the end we prevailed, but as the Duke of Wellington remarked to Thomas Creevy after the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, it was “… the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”.

End of day 3 - the shell is complete

Day 4 was the fun part. We slotted in the remaining poly-carbon sheets and finished off the construction, apart from one remaining window vent. 

End of day 4 - one vent remains 

It was installing this vent on the morning of day 5 that nearly broke us. The vent is based on an automatic hinge that is controlled by a beeswax cylinder which opens and closes as the wax expands and contracts with changes in the ambient temperature. While this is an incredibly neat idea, the installation of the hinge proved to be a little awkward. In The Two Towers, just before the Battle of Helm's Deep,  Gandalf says to Aragorn, "Look to my coming at first light on the 5th day. At dawn, look to the East." We looked to the East but there was no dawn, no magical intervention, only a grey, leaden sky accompanied by more howling wind and lashing rain.  We were so cold, tired, fed up and drained that when we finally nailed it, we could hardly celebrate. However, after a restorative lunch, a decent coffee and casting our votes in the Voice referendum, we were re-invigorated and began discussing possible interior layouts. Very soon the excitement levels started to rise once more, and we were able to start appreciating fully what is a rather nice-looking piece of construction … 

Job done ...