Son Donagh wonders why we haven’t started building yet. He even hints at the possibility that this whole adventure is a hoax and that the only building we’ll be doing is on the BIG MAC with the wonderful 3D software I bought in January. (I recommend it to anyone who doesn’t want to admit that they like playing games but loves the colourwash of the mighty Apple. Building our house has been a terrific online activity since January.)
However, what son Donagh isn’t grasping is that we are following the advice of our Fortune Cookie at the Port Hawkesbury China King buffet: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” I even thought of having this cast and set up over a gate as a greeting for visitors but the thought of the Auschwitz gate’s "Arbeit macht frei" filled me with horror and sadness to the point where I lost all interest in planning and reverted to chaos.
But maybe the Chinese are right: they often are. Our Masterbuilder has a plan. He is looking ahead. He installs a couple of 240 plugs while I abjectly sweep the floor with the 37.50$ broom I bought yesterday at Home Depot feeling like a character Harold Pinter's Caretaker where, in fact, no one ever sweeps the floor. And off we go to his garage to fetch some machinery: the planer, the bench saw, the power vacuum and a wood modelling machine. This garage of Michael's is a wonder to behold: not an inch to operate in. A gorgeous Ford Mustang (crippled by a faulty computer part) has to be dragged out into the mud, the excavator moved to another part of the zoo and the back hoe brought up to carry stuff in its muzzle. Wonderful theatre.
Our own garage is beginning to look like Joe Fafard’s studio: maybe this is my opportunity to become a Canadian sculptor.
With these machines installed, the Masterbuilder is now ready to talk about our design and his interpretation of it. This will be the strongest house on the Cape, destined for a century or more to annoy the herons fishing down below.
Who gives a hoot about the herons?
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