Saturday 31 May 2008

Persons of great skill and few watches

Glazier: said he'd arrive between 8:00 and 11:00; arrived at 11:45.

Joiner: said he'd arrive at 8:30; arrived at 9:05.

Floorboard merchant: said she'd arrive on Wednesday at 9:30; phoned at 9:35 on Wednesday to reschedule to Friday. Said she'd arrive on Friday at 10; arrived at 11:15; said she'd bring back the invoice at 3:00; brought it back at 7:10.

Moral: always bring something to read, e.g., the complete works of Charles Dickens.

7 comments:

trixie said...

Things I learnt from my late grandmother.

1) You know tradesmen, dear. (I don't think she could have envisaged a floorboard merchant of the feminine inclination.)

2) The classics will help you in ways you can't imagine.

Happy dreamscaping...

TimT said...

I recommend the Grecian Tragedies. The heros and heroines there always have a problem with a Fatal Floor, and thus seem quite relevant to your current flawscaping dilemma.

TimT said...

Of course, Robert Hughes also wrote 'The Fatal Floor' and 'Return to the Fatal Floor', though I agree with other critics who note that it was rather excessive of him to write two at-length books about his problems with a creaky floor-board.

Anonymous said...

And Patrick White's 'Floors in the Glass' (or 'Glass in the Floors', can't remember exact title now) would seem to have two areas of expertise covered.

Anonymous said...

Within two hours of the previously announced time is fairly good, comparatively speaking. My sister's partner is a carpenter and has friends who are plumbers and electricians and who frequently owe him a favour, so we make use of that (it feels almost like corruption!).

Anonymous said...

I have yet to have a "tradie" of the female inclination sent to my place. They always send males. I'm not sure if something about when I request suggests I'm asking for the male variety, but that's what happens.

I find it difficult to imagine most average sized females, or even some of the slightly bigger females, handling our fridge upstairs. It was a big fridge and lots of stairs. Men are generally bigger (and have more muscle percentage), especially shoulder wise than femmes and the two big males they sent over to grunt up our fridge could hardly manage it.

Maybe an iron woman could have done it but she's probably too busy winning comps to want to be carrying fridges around.

Certainly I think I would have smashed that fridge into a thousand small pieces and carried them up piece by piece if it were me, and even then it might have been a bit on the heavy side.

Anonymous said...

They might have had watches aplenty, they just weren't watching them.