Monster Moves (five)

THE phrase "moving home" takes on a whole new meaning in this amazing new series. "The house is coming," yelled the Daigles as their two-storey, eight-bedroom, Victorian house arrived on the back of a truck.

Everyone sighed with relief that the building had completed the 130 mile trip by road, water and airport runway (more of that later) in one piece. The only damage was a broken window, caused by a branch while negotiating a narrow tree-lined avenue to the family's 32 acre farm on Vancouver Island.

Meanwhile, "expert house mover" Jerry Matyiko was overseeing a £1m move of an historic university building, designed by Thomas Jefferson, down a steep slope.

Watching these massive structures being moved was mind-boggling, especially as the narrator kept reminding us of the potential for disaster. There was footage of a previous house move that went wrong, ending with the building collapsing into the sea during its travels.

Moving home is acknowledged as very stressful. Literally picking up your house and transporting it to another location adds to the worry.

The Nickel brothers, in Canada, buy old houses due for demolition for one dollar and then sell them off. The Victorian showhouse was ideal for the Daigles, whose small bungalow was too small for the family.

Their new wood-constructed home cost £50,000. With eight bathrooms, that gave them one each and one left over for the dog.

The price included delivery - from Victoria to the Daigles home 150 miles away in Courtenay - which was planned by the Nickel brothers like a military operation.

For starters, the trailer carrying the house had to negotiate a deep ditch and reverse on to a main highway. Timing was vital as they had a time slot to take a short cut by taxiing down the main airport runway at five in the morning. Then it was loaded on to a barge to travel up the coast by water.

The house movers knew that one sudden jolt could cause the house to collapse. But that particular journey looked easy compared to sliding Varsity Hall, built in 1857, down a hill to a new site on the University of Virginia campus.

The steep gradient was the least of their worries as the building itself was falling apart. It had to be cut from its foundations, raised using a network of jacks and 20 steel beams, and put on 152 wheels to roll it slowly downhill

The poor state of the building caused one mover to describe it as "like moving stacks of dominoes". More than 1,000 gallons of grout were poured in the hollow walls to hold them together, windows were removed, and walls were held in place by a spider's web of steel cables.

Computer graphics "talked" us through the process, showing what would happen if the structure did collapse.

Another way would have been to move it brick by brick, then rebuild it on the new site. As long as they didn't do what happened with another building moved by this method - the numbers were written in indelible ink so the reconstructed building looked like someone had scrawled all over it.

Roll A Penny, The Waiting Room, Eaglescliffe

NOT often you get to hear a blast from the Northumbrian pipes as you're tucking into your veggie moussaka. But vegetarian restaurant The Waiting Room, in Eaglescliffe, near Stockton, hosted a performance by folk three-piece Roll A Penny at the weekend.

As well as the bagpipes, the three band members showed us their skills on the fiddle, guitar, mandolin, piano, bouzouki and, of course, the plain old human voice.

The trio, who all hail from the North-East, are among the first batch of graduates from Newcastle University's newly-created degree in folk music - the only one of its kind in the country.

Roll A Penny are eclectic, taking in as many different musical styles as they have instruments, and despite the cosy setting, they don't flinch from showing us the full range of their considerable talents - moving effortlessly from Irish, Scottish and Northumbrian folk music to traditional deep south bluegrass and on to the blues.

Most of the singing is done by Katie Doherty, who has a fantastically pure and powerful voice - made all the more affecting when she's singing a cappella.

Andrew Cadie - the pipe-meister - is also a wizard on the fiddle and Roger Purves plays the mandolin and bouzouki with amazing poise and dexterity.

The band released an album of original material, called Bridges and Lady Midas, earlier this year and are set to tour Italy soon. Their tutors must be very proud.

Paul Willis