TALKING TO THE BUILDER

I told him I’d be home by 5.30 and, because the traffic actually behaved itself for once, I was able to ring him and say that I would be available a little earlier than we’d arranged, but by then it was too late for him to change his plans, which was fair enough, but I thought I should at least make the suggestion.

I had just thought that if he was in his local office, it might not impinge on his evening quite so much, but I always forget that the life of the self-employed trader is always impinging upon their evenings anyway.

Dealing with idiots like me who don’t really know what they need doing but who are aware that the house appears to have started crumbling around their ears.

He had, of course, wanted to be able to inspect the place in something resembling daylight which is a diminishing commodity at this time of the year. I was still full of fear and trepidation, not least because I’d been putting off this moment for far too long and now feared that the very worst possible scenario would naturally be the price that I would have to pay for my negligence.

But then he turned up on time and seemed a nice enough chap which is usually a recipe for disaster in my dealings with anyone because it means that they feel that they can just walk all over me, and we had a bit of a chat and I feel that, in some small way, the wheels are finally in motion (God help me…).

I think it was the fear which had made a procrastinator of me. Dealing with tradesman professionals does, and always has, quite frankly, terrify me. Maybe it’s got something to do with being a “bloke” and feeling that I ought to be able to do these things myself. Or, at the very least, understand every subtle nuance of the process of building houses. I get the same feeling whenever I talk to the garage mechanic, and I always drive away from that with a much lighter wallet and the strange feeling that his “full service” of the car has somehow made it just ever so slightly worse…

“We’ll put up the scaffolding and you can go and have a look for yourself, if you like…” I think I must have paled at the thought, as he quickly added “…or we could take some pictures with a camera and send them to you…?”

I talked of big plans which were dependent upon other smaller plans not turning out to be bigger jobs than we hope they will turn out to be. What might lie beneath those roof tiles when they are stripped away actually terrifies me, and I can already see the carefully budgeted savings vanishing overnight just in order to complete phase one… Or not even phase one, to be honest, more part one of phase one, if you see what I mean…?

Mostly, of course, I just felt insanely embarrassed about all the clutter that we hadn’t had the chance to tidy up in the time between finally getting hold of him to get him to come around, and the visit itself. I muttered excuses about having had to get the stuff away from the mould, but I don’t think that he believed a word of it.

After all, I didn’t…

Still we nattered and chatted and shook hands and he went on his way and I was left at home with the vague sense that I’m on the very brink of mortgaging my entire future.

Again.

A quote will be in the post during the next couple of days and then we’ll see. Not that there’s really much choice. These things simply have to be dealt with whether I like it or not and he does seem to be such a nice man…