The rain persisted most of the day but Simon (one of the more senior builders) and the Young One (as I shall call him until I know his name) shifted more dirt and shillet until the building inspector was satisfied. They filled in the time while waiting for the inspector by dumping piles of grey sand on the opposite side of the driveway to their tower of dug up mud. Having dug deep into our cash reserves we handed over a large wedge to Tony who is hoping that the Readymix concrete for the footings will arrive before they finish work this evening. Whenever it arrives it will have to be then carried barrow by barrow from the gate, down the planks over the steps, alongside the house and into the trenches where one man will be stationed to put it into position. I predict that this will not be fun as even the initial digging out of the footings combined with the rain has made the path outside the house a slimy, slippery mess. The builders have two wheelbarrows and I have offered them the use of ours if they need it. We had all sorts of other goods delivered today from Travis Perkins, we may even have an account there now for all I know, the goodies included long lengths of plastic waste pipe to replace our now broken clay ones, some very large sheets of insulation material and some plastic radon proof sheeting, oh and a considerable number of building blocks. At least the rain had stopped sheeting down while the materials arrived.

Tony is concerned about the level of the drains, especially as we are asking for a below the floor level shower tray. His first discussion with the building inspector is not a good one from our point of view and there has been much looking at plans, laser levels and scratching of heads. We also had a muddled discussion about venting the drainage system and the first suggestion of a large stack pipe running up the new wall past the upstairs window has been roundly vetoed by me. One option may be to have a "Durgo valve" - whatever that is - fitted inside the master bathroom close to the commode, why they can't run a pipe up the inside of the house as on the architect's plans is a mystery to me.

The hard working Simon has a concern too but that is nothing to do with the actual building work. Rumor has got around that I am writing their progress up into a blog and they have seen me taking pictures with a digital camera and now Simon has convinced himself that I even have a webcam following his every move. Let me explain. When Hilary and I were moving our dry stone walls around to make space for the extension we created a walled off area with large wooden boards behind it to hold back the soil where we are growing some more heathers. To brighten up the wall a bit we placed some garden ornaments including models of an otter and a fox but more importantly a small laughing, fat and happy Buddha. Simon has convinced himself that the eyes of the Buddha follow him around while he is working and that I must be remotely operating a webcam to ensure that he is not slacking. I'm only half convinced that he's not joking and thinking what a smart idea that would be anyway......