After months of back-breaking-sweat-filled-enamel-furnace-bricklaying on the Continent
("Harwich for the continent and Frinton for the incontinent" was the jest of this era) the old man
returns home for some well-earned rest.

"Sleeping is no mean art: you need to stay awake all day to do it." (F.Nietzsche).
(Not when you have been labouring away in enamel furnaces.)

The back garden would have been lulled into the deepest of sleeps during the long weeks of the old man's absence. On his return it had no inkling of the ferocious rate of digging that was poised to overwhelm it. Even seconds before a frenzied demented attack was launched by the spade and fork pincer movement the forest of foliage, weeds and dandelions would still be idly swaying nonchalantly to and fro in the breeze without a worry in the world.
Within two or three days the soil would have been turned over, plumb-lined rows of potatoes and cabbages set in place, and the ash-filled garden path firmed up. With the prefab's rear returned to its "ship-shape and Bristol fashion" grandeur the telescopic lens of the oldman's advance battalion turned to eye up the garden in the front. The first casualties would be the lawn and prefab number seventeen's famous light green speckled hedge. Both would receive the
"take-no-prisoners short-back-and sides' treatment" (known locally as a 'Ray Rosewarn' after Twiverton's most celebrated and most politically informed barber.)
The prolific work-rate of the old man evokes awestruck admiration. "So that is why he got that Derro Enamels job!" people would mutter. (Going from fourteen year old coalminer to hotel expenses paid international bricklayer represented an epic feat of social mobility.) It never took long before the name of Alexey Stakhanov sprang from people's lips. Stakhanov was the Hero of Socialist Labour whose world historic feat was to mine 227 tons of coal in a single shift in Russia in 1937. This made such an impact that his beaming features were to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. No such plaudits would ever be bestowed on the prefabs' Jack Morgan. And yet - as any dispassionate observer of the semi-miraculous transformation of our prefab's back garden will be the first to tell you - he was clearly up there in the Alexey Stakhanov super-productive worker aristocracy league.
With the feats of heroic labour completed the old man puts on his American movie Humphrey Bogarte-style hat and catch the 5A bus into town. The first port of call is the plush bank in Milsom Street - the one with the elegant ceiling which is lined with chandeliers. This is where a near-empty wallet will be filled to the brim with ten shilling and one pound notes. The second port of call will be one of Bath's fine "Wine of the Gods!" drinking haunts. (There will be no third port of call.) After arduous weeks of labour, of dark nights of proletarian exile, of aching muscles and mountains of bricks, of days filled with sweat and cement dust, of evenings caressed with lonely thoughts of home, an interlude has arrived which was to be sweetly savoured.
The old man strides into Smith's Wine Vaults, salutes the landlord, invites him to "have one on me", lights up a Dutch cigar, and begins to celebrate the joys of his resurrected prefab life.