For those wondering why there has been little seen of me on my blog, on IRC or on Overclockers, it’s because I’ve been a busy boy of late doing the most dreaded of all things… manual labour.

I’ve been gardening! The problem with that is that I hate gardening. I hate dirt and insects so I’m not naturally inclined to go digging stuff up, but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing this past week. My parents are sorting the garden out and from the drawn plans, it should be nice, a patio, turf, tree, water feature and plants… and hopefully a barbecue because let’s face it, what good is a garden without a barbecue?

Unfortunately the state of our garden was a disgrace. When the house was bought you could get turf but at a very high price, and it couldn’t be afforded, unfortunately the state of the garden was horrific and required several goings over with a strimmer and plenty of digging, both of weeds and of the surface layer of mud for the patio and to stop the grass coming through. The garden itself isn’t small (nor is it acres :p), but it’s been a phenomenal amount of work which involved raking up all the grass, digging out all the weeds, digging up all the mud into a pile. Now that the garden is all dug up the pile of mud needed putting into the large hired skip which is at the front of the house, so it involves digging what I’ve already dug, putting it into a wheelbarrow then digging it back out into the skip (or if someone was willing to help, tip it into the skip – Thanks Lee!).

I’ve been shattered and haven’t been up to much else, it’s just a good job I’m quite a big lad (5’11″ and 12.5st) otherwise I’d be completely out on my feet. It’s not entirely finished, but it will be before the weekend, hopefully someone can get in and help me, Matthew and Stephen lucked out on the basis that they’re both in different continents (Africa and North America respectively) and Lee is going away this weekend, My father is away on work and my mother has an infection in her gums… Everyone’s doing it on purpose I swear…

So that’s why I’ve not been updating, but I will make up for that the next couple of days as my hands are blistered and cut to hell, so taking a day off from the shovelling.