pumpkinstrokemarrow

Day two of the pond continued more muddy than the first. Second tub floated in OK and settled down level, about a quarter of an inch adrift from the first. But third caused problems. Maybe I was getting tired. The bottom of the appropriate hole coincided with the layer of stones - flints on closer inspection - that I had come across the day before. But this day, the hole was not waterlogged and the stones were hard to move. To save on mud, I thought, rather than use water, to use club hammer and cold chisel. This worked but it was easier to pick the loosened stones out by hand than to get them out with the spade, so did not really win on the mud front.

So, get the third hole to the right size. Add some water to soften it up. Add some ballast to line the bottom of the hole. Add tub. Start to fill the tub with water. Just thinking that all was well and that I could tea-break while the tub filled, when it keeled over. Not right over, but far enough that one side was one or two inches higher than the other, which would not do at all. Then embarked on much fiddling about. Pushing gravel down the low side, spinning the tub, generally trying to shake it into position. Got there in the end, although, sadly, wound up one inch above tub number two. You wouldn't think an inch would show in this context but it does. Also odd how the tubs do not look level - although you know that they are because the water is up to the brim. Clearly the eyes are not under proper control from the centre. Made a start to packing wet clay around the tubs. Not too much at once, so that as it gets really soft I can tamp it down.

By this time covered in mud. Two spades, one gadget for cleaning the spades, trousers, boots and hands. Starting to penetrate.

At which point I am reminded of Mr. J. Joyce. It seems that, for a short time at least, he acted out infantile fantasies with his long suffering wife. According to Brenda Maddox, the author of the biography from which I get this tit-bit, such goings on were not that unusual among repressed and complex-full Edwardians. Dodgy upbringing you know. Be that as it may, I suspect that Joyce was very taken with the infantile fantasies unearthed by his contemporary Freud and decided that he owed it to himself as an artist to try them out. To plumb the depths and then to record the authorised version in Molly's monologues. This despite the claim I found in Ellmann that Joyce was rather averse to Freud. Perhaps they had too much in common, on this point at least, which scared Joyce off.

Reverting to the tub, I think the problem is perhaps that the third tub was high for its width compared to the other two. So the weight of the water in the tub levelled the first two but did not do the trick for the second. Tall tubs unstable.