Two days down the garden have resulted in the cast iron bath full of compost and shrubs being moved across the garden to its new home at the end of the upcoming York Stone patio. Also the shed with all its contents being moved three feet further away from the fence to allow a rain gathering system to be installed.


Did this take super human strength? Certainly not, even Christine, who usually strains her back, arms, legs, neck or whatever else simply by using anything heavier than a pair of pruning shears got involved and proved quite useful. I wouldn’t want her to believe I couldn’t have done it by myself but it was very handy to have some help.


After lots of sweat, pushing, shoving and pulling immovable objects I decide to stand back and think about the problem of how to move heavy objects with minimal effort. I think back to my project management days at work and remember the old theory that the only way to eat an elephant is a bite at a time. It seems a good thought except of course I don’t have an elephant and if by some chance I can find one down the bottom of my garden rather than eat it I will get it to move the bath and shed to the new positions. But that’s not really the point.


A small bit at a time, that’s the theory, if I can move the bath a couple of inches then eventually I can move it to its new position. So looking around the garden I come up with an old fence post and a brick and with a bit of levering the bath moves, not quite in the right direction but it moves.


I gradually become an expert on levers and fulcrum points and gradually the bath is manoeuvred across the garden a few inches at a time. The shed follows suit and perhaps it has taken us a full day but we have finally eaten our elephant, everything is in its right place. Except that Christine is just wondering if the bath needs to be a few more inches to the left.


With my new found skills a pyramid is possible and I suggest that unless the bath stays where it is the pyramid may be getting an occupant. Christine misses the point and continues looking at the garden lay out trying to decide if the bath fits in with the water feature, which comes as a bit of a surprise to me as we don’t have a water feature, yet.


Naturally, we don’t want the new water feature to be alongside the house where an electric feed will be easy but instead we want it in the middle of the lawn. All I need to do now is take up the polythene sheets I have already laid to go under the York Stone patio so I can bury the electric cable to say nothing of moving the two tonne of sand on top of them which I have just barrowed down the drive from the road. Perhaps I just missed the bit about the water feature in Christine's Pink Black Book although I am pretty sure she has only just thought about it!


She has, as usual adopted the design method of trial and error and letting things develop as we go along. She never really understands why it drives me crazy when I need to do things twice but all I can say is that the finished product will look good. It always does. Where’s the spade, I need to start moving sand.