I would never have made it as a journalist, always in the wrong place at the wrong time, but fortunately in Gretchen “The Scoop” Hood I have an alert reporter adept at describing what I’ve missed.
It was a slow Tuesday on the ODEC news front. The Day School Kindergarten class room was basking in all its glory with new paint, new ceiling and new lights – true it is still missing a window but then what a wonderful project for the kindergarten kids to get their teeth into when they get back to school! On the front lot the sand pad for the Great Hall and Narthex was finished and that very morning had passed the geo compression test (as those of you who follow my ramblings about the rear wing construction will know passing that test is the prelude to digging and pouring footings) and Ryan, our Higgerson site supervisor, was putting the site into shape before departing to “constructions new” (more on this later). Your correspondent, having toured the site in the morning was doing what married retired chaps are supposed to do by working through a home to-do-list (I lie like a cheap NAAFI watch*, I was actually inspecting the inside of my eye lids* on a sun lounger) when the text came through from Gretchen “The Scoop” Hood, “hold the front page of the blog, the ODEC vehicle sand trials have just begun!” The finished Great Hall and Narthex sand pad covers much of what used to be the old carpark and is approximately 2 feet high all around, (harping back to the rear wing construction again the sand pad aficionados amongst us will know the height of the sand has to be 4 inches below final floor level to accommodate the concrete pour for the finished floor), in a nutshell we are not talking “kids on the beach sand castle from a bucket mold” here, oh no, we are talking about a large and, what many of us would assume to be, very noticeable sand dune. Well apparently that’s not so, early Tuesday afternoon an Amazon delivery driver in an Enterprise Rental, Ford Transit Van turned into at what used to be the old car park entrance, skillfully avoided the traffic cones and drove onto the sand pad. The driver, realizing a Ford Transit Van has very limited capabilities in sand, started to execute a desperate “u turn” in an ill judged attempt to get back onto terra firma with little success. Transit Vans are real transport workhorses, seen on roads the world over and in that's the rub, “road” is the key word as our intrepid delivery driver was dismayed to discover when his van gracefully settled axle deep in construction sand. Gretchen, Father Bob and Ryan gathered to survey the scene, Ryan rightly declined to pull the van out with one of the big yellow machines, I’m going to miss them, so it was over to Enterprise Van Hire to do the recovery. My Father was a WW2 North African Desert Campaign veteran and I well remember me getting the family car stuck on Pentewan Sands* (actually “in Pentewan Sands” is more accurate) on a rising tide and him telling me that “I got it there it was my job to dig it out!” Enterprise Van Hire are more forgiving than my old Dad and after some wait the recovery was expedited and one humbled Amazon deliver driver was, I am sure, very glad to put ODEC in the rear view mirror as he got away down the road. Not quite the end of this saga, you will recall me saying the pad was finished – well after the Transit Van's attentions now not so much. A Ford Transit Van driven by a cove* ever more desperate to avoid getting stuck really cuts up your sand pad so it was fortunate that Ryan, the Higgerson Site Supervisor, was still there and to a professional like Ryan the destruction caused by a Ford Transit Van to his sand pad was but a mere bagatelle and certainly nothing that a few passes with a heavy roller wouldn’t fix. With pad fixed and extra bollards strategically placed to stop any more “vehicular vandals” from doing donuts on our pad, Ryan followed the rest of his Higgerson’s crew to pastures new! It’s bitter-sweet to see Ryan and his team leave the campus, they have been with us since the last tree was felled but for now their work is done so their departure marks a major milestone in the construction. We have not seen the last of Higgerson for once the Great Hall is constructed Higgerson, perhaps it might even be Ryan, will return to dig the last of the three storm water retention tanks, complete the vehicle entrances/exists and lay the new parking areas but for now it’s “so long, been good to know you!” Stay safe, stay healthy, David Beach “Lie like a cheap NAAFI watch”: British Army slang, the NAAFI was the equivalent to the US Armed Forces PX and it was widely believed among the British troops that certain NAAFI “luxury goods” were not quite as reliable as one might have hoped so a cheap watch purchased from the NAAFI was, in the opinion of the troops, likely to keep bad time hence “to lie like a cheap NAAFI watch” was a nod to not being able to trust a watch from the NAAFI. “Inspecting the inside of my eye lids”: British Army slang for having a nap “Pentewan Sands”: Pentewan is a small seaside village on the south coast of the County of Cornwall in the South West of England blessed with a very large, sandy beach. “Cove”: Old English for a person.
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AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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