Bumble bees, miserable farmers and clients on boats…

…. and cancelled jobs, and job enquiries from afar and mortared work… None of which adds up to a full diary.

It’s rare that I’ve had an extended period where work has slowed down as much as it has the past few weeks. I finished the first phase of the large Stirling job on 29 May but since then work has been very sporadic. An unusual period.

Coinciding with the work slowdown, I’ve neen moving house which has been both time-consuming and stressful. Finally on Monday this week I set off to Stirling to start on phase 2: a few days work removing and rebuilding the original top steps at the property. The client is on holiday but we’d agreed on a design before they left. Materials had been delivered last week and we were good to go. Except that when I started marking out the steps, it was clearly not looking “right”. After phone calls and texts, it was decided to park this job until next week.

Instead I jumped onto a two day repair job long in the books. A fairly simple repair to a car-damaged wall in West Lothian. 20 mins into sorting the stone on Tuesday morning, I disturbed a bumblebee nest. Cue lots of annoyed bees and a waller beating a hasty retreat. I have no interest in removing bees nests and so I went home to do some research into the life cycle of bumbleebees. Thankfully, once they’ve been through the breeding cycle, the nest is abandoned and that means I can get back to work. When that is is unclear. The autumn I think.

I have another small repair job to do on a property in Angus. This was one of a series of small, easy and straight-forward jobs. I made the fatal mistake of not going to see the job before giving a price. It was 2 1/2m of wall needing rebuilt. No biggie. A day to fix. And an hour north from my old house and in a part of the world I rarely get enquiries. Immediately after starting the take down and sorting out of the stone, it was clear that the wall would not go back together the same way. Much of the stone was rotten and fell to dust in my hands. Sourcing field stone to match has proven impossible. The neighbouring farmer has plenty of stone but refuses to give any away or even sell it. I only need 1/2 tonne! This one is half done and currently parked too! It’s the theme of the week.

Of course there are still enquiries coming in, just not many of them are in the “ideal” mode – a complicated job on the Mull of Kintyre that has gone cold, a pizza oven in Fife that was 10 minutes from old house and now more than an hour away and a large job in Ayrshire that is one limits of my daily commute but would require traversing Glasgow twice a day – it’s never a good prospect.

I do have a couple of confirmed jobs on the horizon, so this hiatus is temporary. Things will no doubt pick up again in a couple of weeks and I’ll be back to complaining of chasing my tail again!

It’s just the nature of the job.