[Ag-eq] The BlanchRanch Bulletin [continued]

[Jewel]

"The Great Shed Saga"  Part 4.
Is this the last mention of them?  Well!  Who knows!  I'm not going to stake the BlanchRanch on it!
As my readers will be aware, the builders have "packed up their trunks and trundled back to the 
jungle" like "Nelly, the Elephant" which was a popular request on the long ago Junior Request 
Session aired oevery Sunday morning 6/8am on the NZBC.  After that momentary digression into the 
history of New Zealand radio, back to the subject.  Only 1 of the 4 sheds has a concrete floor:  the 
laundry:  while the remaining 3 just have earth:  2 are general storage sheds while the 4th is for 
firewood.
I asked Sam, the foreman builder if they were going to level the earth floors and he replied that it 
was not in the contract, so "No!  they wouldn't  be!"
After they had gone, I saw that shingle [pea gravel] had been dumped in shed1, and I levelled that 
out myself with a rake, but no attempt of any description had been made in shed3, and the floor 
there was very rough,  great humps and hollows all over the place with 1 of these hollows being at 
the entrance which, after a couple of days of rain, had become a miniature swimming pool:  [would 
OSH, the Office of safety and health demand that I fence it?  ].
To judge how much filling I could put in there to bring the ground up to just short of the bottom of 
the door, I shut it:  the door!  And shut it remained!  It had, automatically, locked:  I did not, 
accidentally,  lock it, in fact, the locking mechanism on the door knob was still in the unlocked 
position, but the door was * locked and nothing that I did would unlock it!
I was, really in a blue funk!  This was Saturday afternoon and my next regular visitor was not due 
until Monday morning:  Guideon, my guide dog, was shut in the house!
Now, we come to a little bit of:  what will I call it?  ESP?  It is only on very rare occasions that 
I have my cellphone with me when I am outside, but, on this particular occasion, prior to my leaving 
the house to go out into a, very, muddy garden, something prompted me to put the phone in my pocket! 
And what a stroke of luck that was!  Without it, there would have been no way to alert anyone to the 
fact that I was in trouble.  I do send a text twice daily to a friend to say that I am ok, but it 
would not have been till this afternoon, Sunday, that she would have become alarmed and would have 
come round to check!
Anyway, I did have the phone, so called my friend and also a bloke who lives over my back boundary 
and has been of help in the past with checking on the sheep etc.
Well, Fay and Keith, along with a friend of his, arrived and tried to open the door, but they had no 
more success from the outside than I had had from the inside:  [I did not have the keys, Versatile 
not having given them to me!]  then, Keith's friend called upon his lock-picking skills and VOILA! 
the door came open!
Yesterday's lesson!  WHEN  YOU  HAVE  A  CELLPHONE,  KEEP  IT  WITH  YOU!  YOU  NEVER  KNOW  WHEN 
AN  EMERGENCY  WILL  ARISE  AND  HAVING  IT  MAY  PROVE  TO  BE  THE  DIFFERENCE  BETWEEN  LIFE  AND 
DEATH,  OR  SOMETHING  A  LITTLE  LESS EXTREME!"

Jewel