Crockery shards- Thursday

The lines for the house got drawn today. Bit of a freak out. The foot print...bigger than it looks on paper. Gotta get my head around a new shape and size. Two dimensions look different. As Kevin says, "You've got a lot of verandah space." 

Lunchtime and I find Mark who's putting out the string which outlines the footprint. Says there's lots of crockery shards. Probably a midden, an old dump for domestic waste. We pick through it and I put some shards safely on the pile for found objects under the tree at the back. Zeb turns up and the boys lunch on KFC in their van.

After school I track down Allan who I organised to make corbels at least a year ago. He's still up for it and is going to make a sample. He's an ace wood crafter. His view on the crockery: hard fill used to get tossed into the swamp that is Christchurch to firm up the ground. 

Back at 22 College Ave, Kevin has arrived to check his digger for tomorrow. We chat about the trees I'm trying to save and he promises to deposit earth where I need it at the back- the levels are a bit up and down where the garage was. And before that too. As he's digging he covers up the bag of cat food I left lying around. But after a think drags the jaws of death over the ground and finds it; tattered but nevertheless enough for Pierre, my cat's, dinner, tonight. 

I cross the road to borrow a red bin. My neighbours, Dan and Shelley, are rebuilding too. Both our houses got EQC'ed, around $130 000 each. They are no more. Thanks EQC, that was a waste of time and money. About the crockery, Dan reckons people used to discard it out the back door. We chat about rubbish and dumping. Stories about Agent Orange in the Mackenzie Country and dumps close to rivers.

Folk lore. This is how it starts.