Chapter 6: Our Cabin

The next morning I quietly got out of bed, dressed and left the van. I have been trying to work out a theory that the time warp hole only opened around about six in the morning, which is my usual rising time anyway. This time of the morning is one of the quietest times on the road that we had been travelling down, and if the warp had opened at any other time, there would have been a lot more vehicles in the clearing.

When I got up I took the long pole, which I call my Calendar Stick, I cut a notch in it for every day I have been here. I cut the notch for the day we were away, and one for this morning. It appeared that I was now in my forty-second day here. The time has passed so swiftly, I just could not believe it.

I didn't know what I was looking for, but as I was lighting the fire, and going about the early morning chores, I kept a look out for any strange happenings, that would show the time hole, or whatsoever was active. I kept looking at my watch and it was now half-past six and nothing. I knew by this time traffic would be building up, and it was unlikely that anything would happen now.

The good thing about army issue watches, they were of the best quality, mine was a Rolex, and I have had it now for four years, it has only lost thirty seconds in all that time, I had checked it just before we had left for embarkation, by the atomic clock on the internet, and made the appropriate adjustment.

By this time, my now much larger family had emerged from their slumber, and appeared at the door of the van.

When I was looking in the ration trailer, I found a large tin of coffee, and was going to introduce Jane and Hild to another beverage. I know that some people don't like the taste of coffee, but I had to see if my companions were in this category. Coffee was easier to make, or at least this version was, it was in the powdered form, and only needed stirring into hot water.

Jane and Hild soon returned having completed their ablutions, and now were looking like a set of twins. Both fair, same build and height! The only difference was the size of Hild's breasts; she was a lot bigger in that region than Jane. I had noticed that the raiders from the west had all been dark headed. Most of Jane's people were fair headed. So they must belong to a different tribe all together.

The coffee was accepted as an alternative to tea, but I think that they preferred the tea to the coffee, but now we had at least an alternative beverage.

After breakfast I decided to forage round the area. "Jane I'm going to have a look around, I will be back around noon, so that will give you time to really show Hild around our area."

I set out to follow the stream upstream, as I had never really explored this area at all. I had spent most of the time just setting up things, just to be able to survive. Now I had help at the van, I could now find what lay beyond the perimeters of the clearing.

About one mile up I came to an area where the vegetation changed, instead of oak, chestnut and plane trees, here were firs, and the ground was littered with boulders. I had seen boulder outcrops like this before, and had been told that this was the remnants from glazier deposits during the ice age. Here was my quarry for stones for the house I wanted to build, and the trees, which could provide the walls. I had been thinking of combining the sunken floor idea with the log cabin design. This would give me a low profile building but with sufficient headroom inside.

I could use the truck to transport the materials to our site, but it was going to be a Herculean task to cut sufficient trees to build the cabin. Also I had to find a route here for the truck.

Rather than continue foraging I began to scout out a passage for the truck. It was less of a problem than I first imagined, as there was plenty of space between the large trees to drive the truck. Not straight, but would be easily accessed.

Right at that moment in front of me stood up a small roe deer, and without a second thought I had the rifle up and shot him dead. Roe deer were just the right size for us, as we had no way to keep our meat fresh for long periods, and we wasted a lot with a big animal kill, even although Jane had cut a large portion of the red deer I had killed in strips, and had hung them up to dry, we had thrown a lot away.

It was easy to throw the deer over my shoulders, and I returned to the camp. The kill delighted the women; I saw that Jane had given Hild a knife of her own, and that she was wearing it in the same fashion as Jane did. It looked as though I had acquired a pair of Amazon's.

As they were working on the deer, I walked up behind them and placed my hand on each of their bottoms. Neither of them was wearing panties.

"Where are your panties?"

"I don't like them, they make me itch."

Who was I to argue! I could get an unobstructed feel of their pussies any time I wanted now.

"I have found a place to get the rocks for the house I am going to build; I am going to build a house a bit like your brothers, but a lot different walls, and roof." I could tell that she wasn't sure about the building,

"It would be nice to have a bigger house now there are three of us."

I sat down, and with a pencil started to draw an outline on a piece of cardboard from a ration pack. I looked up, and saw both the women staring at the outline I had drawn. I suddenly realized that this was the first time Jane had ever seen me drawing or writing, she was intrigued. I handed her the pencil and a piece of card and let her try, all she did was make a squiggle, but as far as she was concerned, it was a work of art. I couldn't let one try without the other, so I gave a piece of card to Hild, and Jane gave her the pencil. Hild tried to copy what I had drawn, at least she got four corners, and the lines were a bit wiggly, but it pleased her. She gave me back the pencil, and hugged the drawing to her chest.

What I was going to try and build was a 35 by 15foot cabin with a 6 foot six inch ceiling. I wanted the roof to slope towards the back, as this would be easier to build, and allow the rain to run off away from the doorway. The cabin would only have two rooms, a bedroom, and a living area, I also intended to build a fireplace in the living area, on the rear wall, so that we could have heating, as well as allow the cooking to be done in the living area. The pioneers of America and Australia were able to build such structures, and I couldn't see why I couldn't also.

The problem of course, was I had no saw or nails, but I had found in one of the tool-kits, a brace and four long bits, 12 inched long and a range from 1 inch to quarter inch. With the brace, I had the ability to bore holes, and then I could make some treenails, and secure two pieces of wood together by driving the treenail into the two holes. It worked on the old sailing ships, so I can't see why I couldn't use the same method.

I knew where to get the timber, the rocks for the wall, and at a spot just south of us, there was a large clay patch, which I could use to hold the boulders in place. When clay dries it is almost as good as mortar. Pioneers also used it, to pack the cracks between the logs of their cabins to make them waterproof. I had access to all the materials; I just had to find a way to fell the trees, other than manually having to use an axe, as this way would take forever.

Suddenly I remembered the boxes with just numbers on them that was on the ammunition truck. I had to go and get more shells anyway, so at the same time I will have a look inside these boxes.

After I got the rifle and pistol ammunition, I opened one of the two foot square boxes, and found that it contained a drum of Rapid Burning Fuse wire, I have seen Sappers using this stuff to clear trees, to make a helicopter landing pad, but there was a warning on the top of the reel, that says 'NOT TO BE USED IN A WOODED AREA, USE ELECTRONIC DETONATION', and quoted some regulation. In a removable tray also in the box was a packet of 10 detonators also with the same warning printed on it. I have never handled this stuff before, but have seen it being used and will give it a try. I now know how I will fell the trees for our cabin if I can get it to work. First I will have to give it a trial. I put one of the boxes on the trolley to take with me.

The other long box had to be unscrewed; I used my Swiss knife's screwdriver on the four screws, and opened the box. Packed in there was Claymore antipersonnel mines. If ever I have to set up a perimeter defence, I have the means to do so. I could use these items at the present time in case the raiders came, but on second thoughts I decided against using such deadly items.

Not to waste any of the fuse wire, I then returned to where I had seen the fir trees, and wrapped the fuse three times around the tree near the base, with the turns close together. I tucked the loose ends into a turn, and I left about a foot loose then cut it off. Prior to this I had cut a foot of the fuse and inserted it in one of the detonators, this I taped to the loose end of the fuse on the tree. Also earlier I had cut a long thin length of wood and left a fork at the end. I lit a piece of paper, which I had wrapped round the end. Hiding behind another tree, I touched the loose end at the detonator with the flame. There was a loud crack; I had been expecting a loud bang. The tree fell away, and it looked as if it had been cut with a knife.

Now I had to work out a way to fell as many trees as possible in one hit. The reason being, I just don't like working with this material, and the quicker I could finish working with it the better. I would then use the axe to cut the logs to length, and when I got the truck up here, I could use the winch to load the logs onto the trucks tray, unless they were too long.

There were a lot of things I had to do before starting this work. Like digging out the centre, erecting the stone retaining wall, and laying a stone base for the logs to lie on to prevent rot. Now I have a project to get my teeth into, I headed back to the clearing to talk to Jane and Hild.

When I returned the two women were a bit concerned, as they had missed me for quite a while, and had a light meal waiting. I apologized that I had got carried away and forgot all about the time. Since I was there having a bit to eat with my two lovely ladies, I explained to them what I was proposing, and how I will be able to get the timber cut. It took a while to get it across, as I had to explain to Jane, and she in turn had to explain it to Hild, I couldn't go on too fast as I would confuse them both. Both of them had been involved with building the round houses, which seems to be the standard in all the villages we had visited, with just slight variations. I was to built a totally different type, but not too difficult.

Jane told me that she and Hild had been through all the area and Jane had shown Hild what had to be done at various times of the day, so we could have hot water to wash and how to wash the clothes and dishes with the detergent. I had guessed correctly, it was very concentrated, just a small drop in the basin produced a mountain of suds. If you used too much it was very difficult to get rid of the suds. Even although the detergent was unscented there was no lingering smell left on the clothes. With the amount still in the crate we had enough to last us for years, if we were careful.

The first thing after the meal break was to get the girls to give me a hand to remove the frames from the Army truck. Fold the tarpaulin up and put it away, as I intended to use it to cover the roof of the log house. We will make use of the frames for other things, so they too were stored safely away.

I had no string to mark out the foundation for our house, but I had made some short pegs, and with the use of my compass, laid out the foundation with the long side running east to west. I put a peg in the first corner, and just paced out the measurements, pegging off every five paces. We had to make quite a bit of changes one way or another, but eventually we had the pegs in, showing the way we were going to have our house.

I got Jane to get the shovel, and we made a bit of a ceremony of turning over the first sod for our new home, amidst a lot of laughter and joviality. When I looked at the area I proposed to excavate I was astounded. At the edges it would be easy to just shovel it out, but I had to get rid of it away from the house surrounds.