Although the wall got underway yesterday, that was little more than a training exercise and the real work began today. The boys had to complete at least three lines of bricks all the way around, preferably far more, if we were to stand any chance of completing the project on time. Progress initially was slow as boys got to grips with working with the uneven bricks and extraordinarily almost all of them could not understand that the bricks had to be laid in an interlocking pattern. They were focusing on making sure they were level and straight, but ignored how they interacted with all the surrounding bricks. A generation ago it was unthinkable that any boy who had grown up with good old fashioned Lego bricks could make such an error but it would seem that most of the boys had never had the pleasure of working with such simple generic bricks; Lego nowadays is small, fiddly and custom built for each specific model. With hindsight it would have been fantastic to have a set of such Lego to show the boys exactly what was required. As a result of this oversight and the modern advances in injection moulding technology the first three layers were a sight for sore eyes; there was no discernable pattern and mortar all over the place. By the end of the day though most of the boys had realised the error of their ways and hopefully this become apparent tomorrow.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the courtyard a group of boys were helping two local wood craftsmen to construct the trusses to support the roof. There are 13 of these to be made and it was expected that these would take three days to construct. Progress was slow initially as they worked out the exact sizes that would be required. Once the first one was constructed though, they used it as a template and built all the subsequent ones on top of it. This sped up hugely and the boys were able to get involved, selecting wood, sawing and carrying. Unfortunately it quickly became clear that there were some parts of this job that had to be completed by skilled labour as they involved an extremely sharp carving tool. Nevertheless, the boys were very helpful, by the end of the day second guessing the requirements of the craftsmen and enabling the completion of 6 trusses. There are only 7 to go and these should be completed tomorrow; a day ahead of schedule and a couple of days before they are needed.
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