Think twice, act once

Not being able to get assistance from anyone else, this is how I am lifting the stone lions. The plan is to get them on a level at the same height as the back of the Volvo, then slide them in on a smooth board with dried sand as a lubricant. Same in reverse at the other end.

Years ago I watched a documentary on the restoration of a huge and priceless antiquity which was a heavy ceramic urn from an ancient civilisation.

The thing was found in hundreds of pieces and was painstakingly reassembled over a period of months by a team of museum conservators in the museum workshop.

The team was headed by a large, middle-aged woman who explained the procedures stage by stage, and the filming was done in those stages as the urn came together on the bench.

Finally, the day came when the urn was to be lifted and taken out of the workshop to be displayed to the public.

She had designed a system very similar to the above photo. Too similar.

In the photo, you will see that the ropes on each corner come together at a single point which is the hook of the hoist. The blue strips of soft plastic are to protect the stone from the pressure of the ropes as the thing is lifted. In this case the pressure will not be too great, but you would not want to have your finger between the ropes and the stone.

When the time came to lift the urn, the conservator was fussing around in a panic, barking orders to the hapless crew as the filming continued at this crucial stage. From the moment I saw her lifting system I knew exactly what was going to happen. It was excruciating to watch.

She had a platform like mine with the ropes on the four corners, but she missed something vital out. There should have been a cruciform spacer at the top so that the ropes remained vertical during the lift.

As they began hauling on the hoist, the ropes began to squeeze ever tighter against the rotund sides of the urn until the whole thing shattered into pieces with a loud explosion. She was not very happy to say the least, and the catastrophe was caught on camera for all the world to see for evermore. I think that she was panicking because she instinctively knew - in her heart of hearts - what was going to happen.

Sometimes, the most talented conservators lack the common sense of the average builder.