There's been a lot of activity on the site the past couple of weeks. A digger and a sort of bulldozer-y thing and a lot of men have been moving sand around all day long. For a while it looked like a lot of activity with no real purpose. This is how it looked after a week. I mean I'm sure they had a good time but what did it really accomplish? Apparently it was a vital stage of preparation because we then started seeing some visible progress. They started making trenches, and sliding 22ft steel beams in, and pouring concrete around them. That's the shoring, that will hold our foundations stable while they, um, set. I'm a bit sketchy on the details. And now, we are the proud owners of a nice neat sandy basement. Next comes the foundation. I'm a bit confused about where that will go. If it goes in this hole then where will our wine cellar go? Watch this space.