Skelf central.....

As part of our winter preparations, we had a load of kiln-dried logs delivered yesterday, along with a flat-pack log store. Late afternoon, a huge pantechnicon panted to a halt, air brakes screeching, and a very helpful chap proceeded to unload a massive bag of logs onto our front drive.

And when I say massive I do mean MASSIVE.  Much bigger than enormous.

After he'd gone we both stood on the drive, just staring at it, then at each other, wondering how on earth we were going to get them all round to the back of the house.  

We unearthed a small folding metal trolley thing from the shed, and tried to attach a small plastic crate to it but it rapidly became apparent that it would take the entire weekend to transport the logs that way.

Fortunately I had an unaccustomed brainwave, and suggested we use our council wheelie bins, filling them up from the bag on the drive and wheeling them round the back.  Brilliant or what?  And unlike so many apparently inspirational but ultimately useless idea, it did work.  

Perfectly!

Luckily we had a spare MASSIVE bag, into which we put the logs from the wheelie bins, conscious all the while that the sky was darkening to an ominous shade of grey.

One and half hours later, we wheeled the final bin load round to the back and a very strange thing happened.  We had already filled the second MASSIVE bag right to the top, but there was still A WHOLE BIN LOAD of logs left over.

How did THAT happen?

Both MASSIVE bags were exactly the same size, and if anything, we loaded the logs into the second one in a more organised manner than the original bag. 

However, with the skies getting darker by the second, we had no time to ponder on this physical impossibility, and decided to crack on and assemble the log store.

This is where the skelfs come in.  Skelf is one of those words that has non-Scots looking at me as if I've suddenly started speaking in tongues.  It's common parlance in Scotland, and means:-

skelf - noun

1. a splinter of wood, especially when embedded accidentally in the skin 
as in " Awww, furr fuxache, ah've goat a skelf in ma erse!"

Interestingly, it has a second meaning, again in common use north of the border....

2. a thin or diminutive person
as in "Aye, see hur, she's like a wee skelf.... totull stranger tae a fish supper"

So anyway, taking the first meaning, the flat pack log store was "pure skelf central so it was" 

Even the skelfs had skelfs.  

Nevertheless, an hour later, as it was beginning to get proper dark we managed to woman-handle the finished log store into position and retired indoors to tackle our skelfs with needles and tweezers.

Today, we have the unenviable task of transferring this.....

 MASSIVE bag of logs....

Plus mysterious extra bin full of logs....

into this.......

 Skelf central log store

It's going to be a l-o-n-g day.....