Tiles

The tiles that Tivoli and I bought ten days ago weigh a bit under 800kg. I was anxious about getting them transported from Kettering to Oxford then when that was sorted out I was anxious about appeasing the owner of the car park behind my garden about a lorry arriving at some unknown time today. (Two years ago the consortium that owned the car park readily agreed to provide me access but it has been sold twice since then and the current owner is not happy about the status quo.) When it seemed that that was also under control I was anxious about being able to cart them all in from the car park to a space in the back garden. So I didn't sleep brilliantly last night. 

And I wasn't thrilled when I woke to absolutely torrential rain. I'd chosen today for the delivery because it was my day off work but of course I had no idea about the weather.

I'd been promised notification of the actual arrival time but that didn't happen until I had a call from the lorry driver asking where he was supposed to be going. He had not received (or not read) all my careful instructions about the two roads in Oxford with almost identical names, about the LTNs that don't yet appear on satnavs and about how to approach the car park. But he was only 20 minutes away by lorry and I was 15 minutes away by bike so I abandoned my morning tea, put on my most robust waterproof jacket (no time for the waterproof trousers) jumped on the bike and pedalled hard.

I got there with enough time to open up the back fence and to put some empty pallets (very reluctantly, over the peony plants but there was nowhere else and they are dormant for now) so I would be able to stack the tiles. I was there when he arrived and I had to ask him to move the lorry over so as not to upset other car park users. I was watching as he put the pallet-lifter under the pallet that seemed to me to be too flimsy for its load and as he lifted it and the wood distorted I tried hard not to hear the crack of a large tile on the bottom. When he moved the pallet onto the lorry tail-lift he told me to stand well back because if it slipped he was not going to try to stop it. I held my breath. The tail lift bent alarmingly but the pallet got to the ground and I heard no more cracks. Then he offloaded the lighter pallet and drove away. In the pelting rain I was in charge of this. 

I had no idea that sellotaped cling-film was so hard to undo but bit by bit I unravelled it. As I carried each 14kg box down the makeshift steps into the garden, over the duck-boards that sank into large rain-puddles, through the squelchy mud and onto the pallets I'd placed over the peonies, I remembered the many times I have sat through Manual Handling training and Slips, Trips and Falls training, as well as the yoga classes I've been to that taught me how to use core muscles to protect more vulnerable ones. First my legs then my feet got soaked and soon I was remembering winter walks in the Peak District and how exhilarating the misery feels when it's over. At least it was much easier to pace myself than on Kinder Scout in the fog. One box moved, two boxes moved, three boxes moved, seven boxes moved, fifteen boxes moved, more boxes moved than not... The 20kg boxes were hard but there were only six of them. As I was wondering how I'd move the 900x900 tiles each weighing 19.6kg, a director of the building firm turned up with some wood for battening insulation and asked the site foreman to let the labourers help. With one person on each side of a pair of large tiles they got all 17 done very quickly and I was grateful.

For the record, they moved 333kg in 12 minutes and I moved 456kg in 70. Four of them = 48 person minutes = 6.94kg per person-minute. One of me = 6.51kg per me-minute. And their pallet was slightly less far to walk than mine. Not bad!