One hot but overcast day, the granite came to grace the island in the kitchen and replace the rather bumpy MDF that had been there now for some weeks. A third of a ton of it on a very large lorry down the drive, round the gravel to the front of the house, and onto the side lawn. The rain of the preceding days had left the grass soft but not impossible: we put long planks under the wheels and with great care the driver manoeuvred his lorry down them. As he edged forwards we took the planks out from behind the back wheels and put them down again in his path - I smiled as I remembered family holidays when we seemed to spend all day every day moving boats up and down a stony foreshore with rollers in the same way.
Finally he was in place. The foreman, known now as ‘Unca Pete’ thanks to our youngest’s conviction that he was around so much that he must actually be family, summoned seven helpers and I sat at a distance cross-legged on the grass with said No3 in my lap, and my camera. After some considerable discussion the webbing loops were slung round the slab and the crane slowly lifted it with four of the men on the back of the lorry to make sure it didn't swing, and the others on the ground waiting to guide it and keep it steady as it came down. Inch by inch we made progress, and then the dark clouds that had been gathering in increasing warmth decided it was all going far too well and a truly impressive cloudburst rendered everything - the ground, the granite, the kitchen floor - too slippery for safety. Standing the slab on a long edge on the already wet grass would have resulted in the thing slicing through the lawn and probably burying itself, so two of the planks were slotted underneath it and it stood, held upright only by the loops, while we took shelter - No3 and me with two of the lads under the trampoline, the rest in the kitchen cheerily waving my biscuits at us. Only when No3 finally broke free and set off squelching through the torrent towards the Hobnobs did anyone relent, but by then they had blown it and if they thought I was going to relieve them of childcare duties AND get wet in the process, they really didn't know me at all.
Eventually the rain stopped and we wiped the slab as dry as we could before the guys took hold and the crane again took the strain. Lifting it gently only a couple of inches off the ground, the arm was then extended to feed my new island through the door into the echoing kitchen. It’s full reach still left us with about fifteen feet to go, and soon there was no option but to lower the thing gently to the ground on a long edge, while the guys held it upright. I think we were all worried that their feet would slip on the damp floor, or that the granite would simply prove too heavy and push them over domino-style, but over the next ten minutes this huge shiny slice was safely pushed and pulled alongside the base unit.
‘That was the easy bit’ Unca Pete offered while they all leant and puffed and wiped their manly brows in the rising heat. The smell of testosterone and Lynx was almost tangible. ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t snap when we lever it.’ That reassured me.
Everyone held their breath – them with effort, me with fear – as with a titanic heave they lifted the rock (which is, after all, what it is) and slid it half onto the island. There was a creak and the guys froze.
‘No problem’ said Unca Pete. ‘Let it settle. No ... slowly ... slide it over.’
And it really was that simple. (If only for me.) Twenty seconds later it was in place and the nature of the whole kitchen had changed. It wasn’t any longer a potentially lovely room with a chunk of MDF in the middle: it was a really wonderful space with a serious slab of worksurface in the middle. A place in which I could finally see that one day some serious cooking and feeding might actually happen. Once I got the gasping, relieved Guys off it and out of the way – and once I could persuade Unca Pete that it was safe.
‘It’s no good’ he said, worriedly. ‘It could crush the baby.’ Genuinely touched, I still had to resist an urge to laugh. It weighed a third of a ton and had taken eight men an hour and a crane to get it into place but good old Unca Pete, as ever with our best interests at heart, proceeded to go round the thing with his mastic gun, sticking it into place. Within minutes we had put No3 in the middle of it and, well brought-up child that he is, he had set to work cleaning it with his nappy clad bottom, bum shuffling for the first and last time in his life.
The phone rang. Eeyore checking on progress.
‘What’s different?’ he asked. ‘It’s gone all echoey.’
