Today I mixed a load of cement, and built more bricks. The aviary will be finished by hook or by crook, but now we hear with relief we have more weeks than we thought. This is really good news as I don’t think we could have finished the Poultry Palace and moat and all the bits I have designed to go within its boundaries by the end of two more weeks. The weather is against us and the design changes every time we learn a bit more about the birds.

I think back on all the cement and concrete we have mixed since coming here whether it’s laying bricks or blocks, rendering walls or laying floors. There have been some notable times in the last 12 years. 

We had no sooner arrived in Spain at the invitation of friends who had made the move here and clearly loved it. We visited them in Torrevieja and then went to the local shopping centre Habañeras  to explore. It was on three floors and we parked the car at the bottom and made for the escalators to go up to the shops. The first thing we saw was a guy coming down with...... a cement mixer....... we knew this was a good place to be and not that long after that we moved over and one of the first things we did was to go back to the shopping centre to buy ourselves a bright orange mixer. Oh joy, now the sky was the limit.

When I was a small child my Dad showed me how to mix mortar, I was fascinated watching him mix sand and cement on a board and make a well in the centre, then pouring in the water and not letting any escape the crater formed by his spade while he mixed it all together, it was hypnotic watching him. Once mixed, to be able to build with it something that hardened and turned into permanent structure was amazing. 

In fact Dad taught me all sorts of useful things from woodwork, building a rack to hold eggs, to safely climbing trees and getting back down again, something I enjoyed immensely and I spent a lot of my childhood up trees. From a big apple tree in our garden I could see so much more than on the ground and it was my world. I loved being outside and I loved building things, to this day nothing has changed.

There has always been plenty to do living in a 100+ year old farmhouse. It was built without foundations onto the sandstone rock. The walls were thick at the bottom and built by piling up rocks and putting cement round them. The walls got thinner as they went up. The floors were local marble tiles set with mortar onto the sandy floor. The whole house was reformed in the 70’s and in some rooms the floors were tiled with ceramic tiles. There is marble in the lounge but elsewhere is all thinner ceramic tiles which are starting to show wear.

The first of many problems appeared in the outside courtyard where a crazy paving effect of marble tiles had been laid on top of gravel. One morning, the day before we travelled back to England to work, I noticed one of the marble tiles was 2 inches up in the air. It was not like that the day before but now, there it was..... I prodded it with my toe, then jumped on it. It didn’t budge. I tried to ignore it but we were going to be away for 2 weeks and goodness knows what we would have found on our return.

I called in the Cavalry. Mal suggested lifting it with a spade to see what was happening. This we did and underneath were tree roots, big ones, and a tangle of growth as if a tree was in the process of popping from the ground at that point. Jack and the beanstalk sprung to mind.

The next tile seemed to be also lifting and the main root disappeared in both directions. There was no choice but to lift both tiles either side of the problem one and see where it went. After digging and lifting I got back to the wall and cut off the root. It smelt heavily of pine therefore the culprit was 20 feet away, through our garden and under the road outside. It was the only one of size that close, so the end I had cut was nearest the tree. The other end would surely die without being attached. I was such an optimist.

Along side the root was an old water pipe, still in use at this point, it was giving off condensation and the root had simply followed it looking for and finding a water source, I surveyed the scene, a pile of soil, a collection of roots and shoots, a hole and a pile of marble tiles........ what a mess, and we left for England in 12 hours.........

I mixed a batch of concrete and filled the hole, there was no time to do a jigsaw with the marble tiles and they were in a crazy paving effect so no worries if a few were missing, so the pile of tiles displaced were left till another day.

Problem solved for now.

Fast forward a few years and whilst washing up in the kitchen I noticed I was getting shorter, this seemed weird as although you expect to get shorter over many years, a few months just didn’t seem quite right. I pulled back the rug and found all the tiles had broken up and were sinking. Solution, get a piece of hardboard and cut it to fit sunken bit, put rug back, carry on with life.

This worked for a while and I fitted a butchers block to the side of the sink area, put it on wheels and levelled it. Time went by and it began to wobble, I lowered one leg, problem solved, only it wasn’t. I carried on sinking and began to find I had to step into a dip to get to the sink. Curiosity got the better of me and I took up the rug and started digging. I removed all the broken tiles and underneath was sand, I got a bucket and trowel and started digging. It didn’t take long to find a thick root, and a water pipe. I cut the root off at both ends and cleared out all the loose sand but while working out what to do next to my surprise a three foot long snake appeared in the kitchen. It must have been under the floor and had got in somewhere, clearly there were gaps under the floor which we had opened up.. It headed under the fridge towards darkness, clearly it didn’t expect to encounter humans.  I went and found a length of drain pipe and put a cover over one end and fastened it with a rubber band. Then Mal positioned the pipe at the back of the fridge on the ground. We hoped to get it to head into the darkness of the pipe. I used a stick to gently move it towards the pipe and gradually it slithered in. When the last bit of tail had vanished inside we stood the pipe up and put a cover on the other end. The snake was relocated a good distance from the house and we mixed the fastest batch of concrete ever and filled the hole in before anything else appeared. To be fair it’s the only snake we have ever had in the house, I think they prefer the wilderness outside to the craziness inside.

I feel I need to finish the saga of the kitchen floor and other concrete stories will have to follow including how I came to end up under a full barrow of freshly mixed cement..............

We had decided to retile the kitchen floor and had bought the tiles ready. The time to start came suddenly when the butchers block lurched sideways and we realised the tiles had given way under it and only three wheels were actually touching the floor. Clearly the tree roots under the floor were on the move. Time had come to see exactly what was going on down there. The square we concreted by the sink was intact as was the water deposit on the other side of the kitchen. It was the equivalent of  a Grecian urn about 12 feet deep.The water it contains is supposed to be a backup to the supplied water but in fact we never use it. It needs covering properly to ensure no one falls in. 

We start lifting tiles and under all of them is dry sand.....and roots. First we scooped sand into buckets, no need to dig, just scoop. Each tile is bedded onto a layer of cement of varying thickness and under that, thin air. Eventually we clear the floor tiles and find solid ground, 6 inches below the surface. First we cut off every root in sight.

Then we gathered up rocks from the garden to place under the floor to save having to mix a vast quantity of concrete. Eventually we fill the void and finish the concreting with a layer of cement to make a smooth surface to tile on.

It takes approximately two minutes for a set of footprints to appear in the wet surface. I look round for the culprit and there are many suspects and more gathering by the minute.

We bring in sheets of wood and position them at angles resting on the work surfaces over the wet floor. Why is life with cats such a challenge?

The floor is finished in stages and we climb around the kitchen crawling on the work surfaces to create meals, the cats watch and wait, and snigger at our antics.

Eventually the floor dries and the wooden boards are returned to the garage. The cats disperse and the floor tiles are laid and grouted. 

It’s so nice to have a flat solid kitchen floor.