The Printemps household has builders in. I know..I know, worse things happen to people every day, but our house is now in total turmoil. However, I am just taking one day at a time and trying to stay calm (while silently screaming inside).
Each morning as I am crawling out of bed and staggering half asleep to the shower, the builder, Roy, arrives at around 7.30am. At 7.31am, the radio is blasting at peak volume and Roy is off. At 7.35am, the drilling, hammering, banging, F’ing and Blinding begins...and that’s just Roy. We have a plumber, two sparks and a plasterer, though, I must admit, not all at the same time usually.
The plumber, Bob, was summoned the other day to move our boiler, amongst other things. Bob has just turned 60 but still thinks he is a 35 year old stud. Unfortunately for us, Bob has the attention span of a goldfish and can’t stick at the job for very long. He announced after removing our boiler on Monday that he would be back on Thursday because he needed more parts and pipes. "Parts and pipes, my a**e", I said. We have now had several cold and damp November nights without central heating. I want to kill Bob.
Our plasterer, Mike, arrived yesterday. Mike is a big bloke, about 6 feet tall or more and built like a rugby player. During their tea break, I brought the biscuit box in and offered him one. He told me he didn’t eat biscuits because he is diabetic. Anyway, when it came to lunchtime, I asked him if he was having a break with the others and he said no because he wanted to keep going and get the job finished. "Don’t you even stop for a sandwich Mike?", I asked. He said, "No, I just keep going". This concerned me somewhat because of what Mike told me before about being diabetic. Don’t diabetics have to eat regularly to keep blood sugar levels up? I was a little bit worried that this big bloke who is built like a brick outhouse would collapse in my house before he finished the plastering job, so I made him a ham sandwich just to be on the safe side.
Everyone knows that British builders and tradesmen drink a lot of tea. Well, we nearly had a walk out one day when Bob the plumber was here for longer than his usual goldfish attention span. He came to me and said "I need to switch off the water today". I said "Bob, no water, no tea. Simples". I looked behind him and there were suddenly three sets of meerkat eyes in my vision, staring at me in horror. "Okay then", said Bob, I’ll be back on Tuesday". Look of relief on meerkat eyes. Catastrophe averted - phew!
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