Apart from various trips to new and exciting places, I have spent the last few months laying a path down the sheer face that is our back garden. I would still be at it now if Ian had not started to feel sorry for me a few weeks ago and joined in to help with the digging out. It has been hard work but well worth it as we can now scamper up and down the garden without having to use ropes and crampons. 

However, the path laying now feels like a bit of light tinkering compared to the daunting task we are about to embark on - the extension. Buoyed along by enthusiasm driven by a diet of Grand Designs and Restoration Man we decided a few months back to fill in the vast chasm that is the underneath of the house, what fun we thought, they all seem to enjoy it on TV. How foolish we were. 

 This week the plans all came together with the arrival of the Development Approval notice, Construction Certificate and Owner Builder's Licence. We are trying to do as much as we can ourselves and the first task has been to fill the area to the correct heights for the concrete pad.

 This required a huge amount of fill but, as luck would have it, another owner builder around the corner from us had just excavated his site to start building and had a massive pile of fill he needed to get rid of. After an exhausting week of digging and 22 trailer loads later, the pile is now in place under our house and it has cost us nothing apart from a few years off our life expectancy.

 Unfortunately every trailer full has to be transported in wheelbarrows down the slope at the side of the house. We keep telling ourselves this was always going to be the most difficult bit and I hope we are right, I have never been so tired! Every evening at the moment is spent staring vacantly at the TV and groaning whenever we have to get up, all the while each of us hoping the other will crack first and go and make a cup of tea. Zoe tells her friends that her mother has retired from teaching and become a labourer!