fixing a hole

A post about digging, taxation, generational inheritances, reality TV, managerial responsibilities, model car collecting and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

When the Beatles were fixing a hole, it was because the rain was getting in and stopping their mind from wandering. I fixed a hole today, but it was to let the rain in.

See, Chateau VVB is going to get a rainwater tank one of these months and, because we can't tap the overflow into a stormwater drain, I have to dig a gravel pit. Well, I don't actually have to, but if I want the rebate I do. We want the rebate, so digging it was.

Frankly, I would rather have put some street clothes on and Mrs VVB and I could have popped over to Paddington. We could have had a nice coffee and looked for an additional display cabinet for the model car collection. Because I now have all 1/43 scale models of cars that I have owned in real life that are currently available, I've started broadening the criteria for the collection. The new theme is "Australian cars that I personally think are significant." Plenty of latitude there. So I already have the Trax Opal series EH and FC. This week I got a Bathurst Torana A9X and a Valiant Hemi Pacer. But I've run out of room to display them, the cabinet is full of my mother's old china collection and Mrs VVB's cats.

I'd been wondering what the next model in the Opal series would be (the Opal series, a new release by Trax, is exceptionally detailed for a die-cast model in 1/43 scale). I'd been betting on the HR, almost as iconic as the FC and EH. Lo, they have released it this week but no, they've gone for the HQ Premier.

See, for all the occasional whingeing, Chateau VVB actually does alright income-wise. There are two incomes, one of which is significantly above the median and so at household level we are also doing OK. I must say, the tax cuts over the last few years have been noticeable when it comes to spending and saving. So as long as we don't care about investment in infrastructure, social services and the longer term and anything to do with others, we're OK.

This talk is getting heretical, must get back to the story.

Because it's not quite that simple. Being of baby boomer vintage and having been brought up by a relentless Depression-era do-it-yourselfer, there was no way I could (a) forgo the rebate or (b) pay someone else to dig the hole. So, it's off to Kennards. I'd figured a post hole auger to loosen the soil would make things a bit easier. The council wants a hole measuring 1m in all directions. As offspring no2 would say, that is one big fuck-off hole, especially to dig by oneself at home. The tank bloke told Mrs VVB that we just needed a decent size one.

I always worry about hiring power tools. As someone who spends 30% of his working life at a computer keyboard and the other 70% talking, and doesn't do any exercise, it's a big ask to bring home anything petrol-powered and do the job the way it is supposed to without killing yourself.

I have to do a lot of talking because my business card labels me as a manager. So I have to manage. No I don't, I have to lead. I have to coach, align, empower, support, strategically position, reflect, intepret and encourage. I do all this by talking. It's not appropriate training or preparation for wrestling with monstrous machinery.

However the little one-person post hole digger was fine. A couple of times it started to dig in and threaten to spin me around, but I caught it in time. So we have a hole about the size that the tank bloke reckons will work. After a dodgy start, it even looks more or less like a professionally dug hole. I always used to wonder about these TV shows like Burke's Backyard and Backyard Blitz, especially the latter. They'd descend on some poor wretch's suburban disaster zone and start digging. The nerdy personality-free one would paint lines all over the ground, Scott Cam would start nailing things together, the sheila with the voice like a chainsaw would harangue you about nasturtiums or something while Jamie Durie would flex his pecs at the nearest female apart from the one with the voice like a chainsaw and order everybody about. And their holes were always neat and symmetrical and quite postmodernishly marvellous.

I'd never dug a hole like that in my life. There's always tree roots and bits of old brick and animal droppings and what-all. But I must say that today's hole is one to be quite proud of. As I have to take a photo of it to show the council, I may even post a piccie here.

For those of you counting, we only have obsessive-compulsive disorder to go. Mind you, anyone actually counting will be intimately familiar with OCD, I suspect.

So, Mrs VVB approves the hole and says she's going to have a nap, and I say I'm taking the hole-digger back to Kennards. Except I look at the hole and mentally compare it to the council-approved target and think, "hmm, better dig a bit more."

And I did. Fortunately I don't have to give any piano concert recitals tonight because my hands have gone all claw-like from gripping the machine. But I can still type.