The Endgame’s first week; concrete ain’t wot it used to be

After those colourful pictures of the rhododendrons last week, today I’ve got six photos–three pairs of before-and-after shots–which are altogether far grubbier. But before those: The Endgame has had an amazing first week, and many readers have been kind enough to leave ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. If you’re one of them, thank you. This title has performed far better than I’d been expecting (and hoping!), spending most of the last seven days perched at #1 on three science fiction Hot New Releases charts in the UK and performing strongly in Best Sellers in its main category, Hard Science Fiction. And it looks nice with its siblings

But while that was going on, this week I found out the differences between laying a concrete floor when one is in one’s 20s, and doing so when one is in one’s 50s. At the back of our garden is an old house that has fallen into disrepair. One thing I needed to do was concrete the old kitchen floor to give us more storage room. It didn’t need to be beautiful; it didn’t need to be perfectly level. This is just as well, because it certainly is not either of those things. Fortunately, I had Son and Eldest Daughter to help me on the cement mixer, loading bag after bag of some awful, dusty, ready-mix “concrete”.

And that’s the other difference I discovered: despite driving around all of the local aggregate merchants, none had the right ballast for sale. Yes, I could buy the sand and stones separately and combine them myself before mixing with cement, but this would only add more effort to an already forbidding workload. A friend of Mrs James runs a local builder’s merchants and told us that everyone uses ready-mix “concrete” these days, so I decided to minimise the effort: it’s not like we’ll be living on this floor, it’s only for storage. But the one thing that hasn’t changed, and which never can, is the sheer weight of gear involved: two tonnes dry, plus a couple of hundred litres of water. When you tamp that lot down in your 20s, you feel exercised and satisfied; when you tamp that down in your 50s, you feel really bloody glad knowing that’s the last bloody concrete floor you’re ever going to bloody lay!