After doing months of back-breaking-sweat-filled-enamel-furnace-bricklaying in foreign climes
the old man returns home and embarks on a few massive kips. Only when he has thrown off the shackles of weariness can the epic onslaught begin. "Sleeping is no mean art: you need to stay awake all day to do it." (F.Nietzsche). Not in our prefab.
The forest of foliage in our back garden keeps on growing away and does not have the slightest inkling of the ferocious rate of digging that is about to overwhelm it. "He is back from the continent!" we say to the neighbours. There is no one else on the prefab estate who spends months away working on the 'continent'. Quips about "Harwich for the continent, Frinton for the incontinent!" and "Fog in the channel, continent isolated!" which have us in stitches in prefab number twenty-four (well they did once) are met with puzzlement elsewhere.
It takes just three days for the old man to have turned the soil over, planted neat-lines of potatoes and cabbages, firmed up the garden paths, removed all the weeds that disfigure their edges, and set a delightful vegetable symmetry in place. With the rear of our place ship-shape and in Bristol fashion the terrain of battle shifts to the less fearsome garden in the front. Our world famous light green speckled hedge is speedily returned to its original pristine condition and the lawn re-turfed. With the prefab's six windows shining in the mid-day sun thoughts turn to requisitioning materials for the indoor painting and decorating campaign that has been pencilled in for fourth day.
By now the neighbours are staring at this prolific work-rate with awestruck admiration. The name of Alexey Stakhanov naturally springs to their lips. Largely forgotten now, this Russian Hero of Socialist Labour mined 227 tons of coal in a single shift in 1937 and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. No plaudits are going to be bestowed on Twiverton's Jack Morgan. And yet - as any independent observer of the masterly tranformation and aesthetic renewal of the gardens of our prefab will tell you - he is clearly up there in the Alexey Stakhanov super-productive worker aristocracy league.
After the sixth day of labour has been done the old man puts on his American movie Humphrey Bogarte style hat and catches the 5A bus into Bath. His first call will be the plush looking bank in Milsom Street (the one with the elegant ceiling and chandeliers as well) where he will bulge his wallet with a wad of hard-earned ten shilling and one pound notes. Then it will be off for some "Wine of the Gods!" in an old drinking haunt. After an arduous spell of proletarian exile abroad, of aching muscles and mountains of bricks, of days bathed in sweat and cement dust and lonely evenings of lost dreams, days such as these are truly to be savoured. He is both a labourer and a free man again! The old man strides into Smith's Wine Vaults, salutes the landlord, lights up a Dutch cigar, and quietly celebrates his resurrected prefab life.