This is a big deal. For eight years, since we moved into this house, there has been a cheap, pentagonal wooden shed at the bottom of the garden. But the poor thing never knew what it was to be a shed. Not a true shed.

My wife thought of it as a place to put stuff you didn’t want in the house, such as deck chairs, bags of cat litter, curtain-pole fixtures from the old house.

The truth is that if you stuff your shed with junk, it ceases to be a shed; it’s just a junk room at the bottom of the garden. A true shed – a man’s shed – may contain only certain things. So tomorrow, I’m taking delivery of my new shed that will contain manly items such as nuts, bolts, tools and tins of creosote. And, to solve the problem of deck chairs and curtain fixtures, I’m getting another shed!

Two Sheds!

This one’s called a ‘Garden Store’ which one might describe as a small, windowless shed or a large wooden box with a sloping top. But that’s it; the second shed will solve the problem. The girlie stuff will go in one shed, blokey stuff in the other. And that will leave room in the blokey shed for that all-important shed asset – space!

Today, I’ll empty the old shed and clear the ground for the new installations. Fortunately, no rain is forecast for today or tomorrow so I can leave stuff out overnight.

If anyone has any suggestions for things that a shed simply must contain, let’s hear them.