Workshop

After helping Dad move every day for a month, I have got fed up and found myself gainful employment. J is with a childminder all day for five days a week, and I do not yet have the maturity to admit that it is probably better for him than being with me all the time.

As such I have not seen Dad's new house for a while. The house has become rapidly messier and dustier, the dogs installed on the sofa and occasionally rambling between boxes and randomly placed furniture. The kitchen unit has been constructed but the sink is not yet plumbed in. Some crockery has been put away haphazardly and anyway is inaccessible due to the large heap in the kitchen. It is a mixture of odds and ends that complete collections or items that are otherwise lost.

The kitchen is an acidic yellow which Dad is unlikely to repaint, but the afternoon sunshine streaming in gives it a faded nuclear zing, almost pretty. The conservatory is really a glazed lean-to, which now houses a combination of lovely and junk items, which don't obscure the view of the garden from the kitchen.

Dad calls me into the garden. He wants to show me the beginnings of his workshop. The supplies for building the workshop have been delivered and are in the driveway, there is obviously no stopping the project at this late stage.

He has dug out the foundations immediately to the right of the back door. I realise that the workshop will take up most of the nearest bit of the garden, leaving room for a small path. It will take up around a third of the garden. The view will be lost and J will be unable to use the swing which Dad has made him on the apple tree but Dad will be able to get to his new workshop within three seconds of leaving the kitchen.