chrisvenus

I felt like a student again earlier. Not the stress of lots of academic work. Not getting plastered in the bar on cheap student alcohol. No, I felt like a student because at 11:30 at night I was standing in the dark with two friends trying to enact a stupid plan.

What was the plan? As the topic of this post partly suggests we were trying to get a large piece of wood (nearly three meters long by about 0.6m wide and weighing 40ish kg) through an upstairs window of our house from the back garden. I was just left standing in the garden going "This is stupid, this will never work. Remind me, *why* are we trying to get this piece of wood in through the upstairs window in the middle of the night using a barbeque and a washing line? [1]"

For those already introgued by the plan and trying to work out how the barbeque and washing line are involved I will add to your entertainment by letting you know that also used was a towel and a mop (plastic with the flat rectangular end).

Well, Tristam, the mastermind of this plan, convinced me that it would work. we had the wood in the garden, we had a washing line tied around it. We were ready to go. We worked out the battle plan and started enacting it. Well, to be fair we worked out the rough plan, started enacting and then started ad-libbing like crazy.

We stood the wood on end underneath the window it was going in through and realised that we needed to get part of the washing line up to the bedroom window. For those that hadn't guessed the washing line was forming a crude harness that was going to be used for a bit of fine control as it came up. So Angharad runs upstairs with a mop which she lowers out of the window. We tie the washing line to it and she pulls it up.

By this time the towel was already well settled in its place. The towel is laid over the window sill and window frame to minimise scratching and in particular gouging from the fittings. So, we have everything in place. Tristam and I lift the piece of wood up in a very awkward fashion to get it resting on the barbeque. Aha you say, but isn't a barbeque a bit flimsy? Nope. We have a brick barbeque that is nice and solidly attached to the house below the target window and just off to the side.

So, we have it up a couple of feet higher and after my initial worries that it was just going to fall off despite any support from top with washing line were laid to rest we enacted phase two of the plan. I headed upstairs to the window while Tristam waits below. After some more planning and discussion on best methods Tristam pulls from below while I hoist from above with Angharad looking pretty holding the washing line. Personally I don't *think* she could have had much weight on that line but I may be wrong.

So, this piece of wood three meters tall comes rapidly up through the window that is about a meter and a bit from the ceiling. You do the maths. It didn't look pretty at first. However, we managed to tilt it down and got it now horizontal with about half of it sticking out into the night while the lampshade in the room swung in a surprisingly intact fashion.

From this point it was relatively simple. Hoisted out the door with the usual repeate chorus of *bang* "oops" every second or two. A tuck and a tilt and we were done. The escapade over and the piece of wood now blocking the door to the toilet upstairs rather than the lounge door downstairs. Victory was ours and I settled down for a drink and a rest. Intensive work like that should be built up to. Or I should be more fit. One or other.

I am tempted to borrow a digital camera and pose some photos to capture the spirit of this event. I doubt any of us could be bothered with the piece of wood again so I was thinking either balsa or maybe some computer wizardry like in the movies. I doubt I'll bother though. Far too much like hard work. :)

[1] For those interested the piece of wood is to be used as a desk/worktop that will take up approximately half of the study in our house. Its intended to be a single piece so it needs to be that big. To give you some idea of size it is about a foot and a half taller than the average room when stood on end. This means manoeuvering it around the house is distinctly non trivial and the u-turn it would need to make at the top of the stairs really wasn't going to happen. However, there is a roughly straight line for it to travel down between the back bedroom window and the study. Hence, in the window...