When you’re about to climb a mountain, don’t look up.
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You’ll get so terrified of the task ahead you’ll never start.
An old mountaineer told me that, back in the days when I used to climb mountains — or rather when I began the equally terrifying task of facing a blank page.
Story writing, mountain climbing. Same thing.
The old mountaineer told me to focus on the rock face in front of me and travel upwards inch by inch, foothold by handhold.
Also, when you’re halfway up — don’t look down or you’ll freeze.
This is good advice for anyone facing a daunting journey — such as rebuilding a backyard verandah.
It may not be as life-threatening as climbing the Matterhorn or Everest, but when you’re faced with a hundred square metres of merbau boards to remove, refurbish and replace it feels pretty terrifying.
And a whack in the ribs after losing your balance on a deck frame can feel like falling 30 metres down a cliff face to an office boy who gets vertigo changing a light bulb.
Here’s the process: prise up and de-nail all the boards including the side ones; remove rotten joists then roll out waterproof plastic sealer along the tops; jack up any pillars that need replacing; sand each board on the surface and bevel the sides; plug the nail holes with coloured filler making sure to scrape or wipe off the excess before it hardens; stain the surface and sides of each board, then screw them back down trying to avoid splitting the ends.
Now even my fingers hurt after typing that explanation.
It’s good to have a fellow traveller on any journey and I’ve had Ken from Ky with me on this one.
Ken gets on with the tricky stuff like measurements, screwing down and concreting pillar supports. I do what I’m told, so for the past three weeks it’s been sanding, plugging and staining boards.
There’s so many of them they take up every available space in the backyard in separate piles — ones to be sanded, ones that have been sanded and need filling and staining, and ones that are ready to lay.
I lie awake at night counting boards. Just like a giant herd of cows, I know each one by their markings — the grey mould patches, the split ends, the weathering and circles where the pot plants sat.
The job is relentlessly monotonous, particularly sanding. The other day I heard Ken singing to himself over the whine of the electric sander. I asked what he was singing and he told me just the old stuff his steelworker dad used to listen to – Cat Stevens, Little River Band, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. So when it was my turn to sand I began singing to myself too — Beatles, Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones. Whizzing up and down the lengths of three-metre boards in four-four time.
Now I know where the blues and rock and roll comes from — it’s the music of manual labour. The chugging train rhythms and the call and answer choruses are all perfect for killing the monotony of repetitive work.
On Sunday I took a break from sanding and went to see the return of the Shepparton Jazz Band for an afternoon concert at the Aussie Hotel. I couldn’t help marvel at the intricacy of jazz music — moving from 3/4 to 6/8 and wacky stuff like 5/4. Rachael Howard used her silky voice to keep it all flowing on numbers like Minnie the Moocher and Georgia on My Mind before the funk and fusion numbers kicked in with drum breaks and sax solos.
It was a musical journey through the intersections of chaos and order where maths meets art and gets your brain and your feet working — but I can tell you, it’s absolutely hopeless for sanding decking boards in a straight line.