Ruki came to the site in March because she wanted to see the roof, and because she is the only person I know who will drive across London on a Saturday to look at a piece of carpentry.
She is a coroner. She spends her working life establishing what actually happened to people, and she has no patience whatsoever for the way the rest of us describe our lives.
“It’s a shed,” she said, standing in the deep end among the stacked chairs.
“It’s a Grade II listed shed.”
“It’s a cold Grade II listed shed. Show me the famous truss.”
I showed her the famous truss. I showed her the shoe with the lead packed into the crack and the 1968 bolt, and the new cross-beam sketched in chalk on the brickwork where it would go, and she listened properly, which she always does, with her hands in her…
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