Palais au Portacabins

Well, this is exciting. Long term readers (how you both doing?) may remember the accommodation block being built on our back lawn, and the building site that preceded it. The hostel is there for the great and the good of one of Europe's most prestigious high-energy research projects. Surely at least a couple of big bucks were going to be spent. Springfield Power Station's executive washroom would be but a shadow of the glory that would unfurl before out eyes. So we could barely contain ourselves as a pleasant patch of green grass was transformed into a war zone and the tree that was the habitat of a cute little woodpecker was cruelly torn down. What next, we asked ourselves, what next?

What next was something guaranteed to please anyone who OD'd on Lego and Gerry Anderson in their youth. Along comes a huge great crane, like something that has rolled out of Thunderbird 2, and it starts swinging these prefab modules into place. Each one, apparently, already furnished and decorated inside. And there we were, thinking it might be swanky or something. It's going up to three floors, we're told. Fancy!

But, children, can you see what they're doing wrong? Of course you can. Everyone knows that when you build a wall out of blocks you make them overlap. Otherwise the wall just falls over. Honestly, what kind of cowboys are they? I think I'll go and have a word.