First task was the purchase of a sensible amount of cement, with the standard 25kg being far too much, a sensitive topic now that I have learned that the manufacture and consumption of cement accounts for 5% of the green house gas total. Wickes no good. Travis Perkins no good. Screwfix no good - but not complete nonsense in that they did sell suitable sized tubs of cement based screeding mixtures intended for flattening floors. So the next day I cycled over to Homebase, to find that they did sell 5kg bags of cement, just the ticket.
Second task was to dig out some of the earth around the housing, the thing with the square, cast iron grid on top of it, a digging out which revealed that the earthenware soil pipe leading from the housing to the manhole (to the right of the snap above) was itself cracked, presumably the result of either last year's or some other year's drive operations.
Third task was to make the shutter and secure it into place using a couple of small paving slabs.
Fourth task was to mix the concrete and pour it. With pour, the usual word on a building site, being entirely appropriate in this case as I had made the concrete rather wetter than I should. Notwithstanding, a reasonable job. I even went as far as trying to wipe the smears of new concrete off the old concrete, that is to say the concrete laid last year, with the end result rather neater looking than you might think from the snap.
Fifth task was to cover the whole lot with a sturdy plastic bag against rain and frost. Bag and retaining bricks just about visible left.
PS: checking, I find that the last concrete operation was more than two years ago - but it was a good deal more serious than this one. See reference 1. I think I really must be keen on the stuff as a simple query asking for 'concrete' produces an awful lot of hits, mostly to do with other peoples' concrete, rather than my own.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/yard-retaining-wall-phases-4a-4b.html.
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