Builders

Builders
Blimey. What a useless shower. My flat in London has always been a bit of a sieve and every so often I need to plug a new hole (so to speak). Finding a builder is a painful process of asking (nay, begging) everyone you know (or meet, however briefly – newspaper vendors, people at bus stops) for recommendations, phoning said builders and being told they either can’t fit you in or you are not in their area. Now London is a big city, I grant you, but you wouldn’t catch an Australian saying, nah, mate, you’re a half hour drive away, I couldn’t possibly make it that far.

Once you have found someone to come and give you an estimate (usually from the Yellow Pages despite the fact that, like therapists, you should NEVER use a builder without a personal recommendation) they turn up. Often days late and without ladders or other necessary equipment. Or they’ll send their cousin’s girlfriend’s brother who’s on work experience. Doesn’t have a clue, clearly, but you still fawn over him because you NEED the work done. The buckets are overflowing, the plaster is falling off in clumps and you’ve had enough of that mouldy smell. So Boy Wonder tells you he can’t give you an estimate since he’s only thirteen and needs to ask his mum. Or the builder you originally requested, whichever is closer.

Seven weeks later, the Builder Himself might turn up and have a look around. Tells you he’ll have to price up some parts and will send you a quote in the post. Bless his optimism. He knows as well as you do that he can’t actually write. Why should he bother with all that book-larnin? There are so many suckers out there who’ll pay him for slapping a patch of tar-paper over their gaping roofs, cash-in-hand, no questions asked. Writing’s for poofs and girls. Real men with enough back-hair and facial pocks don’t need it.

So now you have been told that you will need to re-mortgage and possibly sell your children in order to pay for the tiny crack in the fifth rooftile along. Fifteen weeks later, in a downpour of biblical proportions the builder turns up. Clearly not dressed for work he tells you, as if it’s news to him, that it’s raining and he can’t possibly work in these conditions. His clean, pressed jeans and flashy white trainers, along with the monogrammed darts in his shirt pocket, indicate that he had no intention of working today and only turned up to make you think he was conscientious, possibly in the hopes of scamming a tip from you. He informs you patronisingly that you should have planned to get the work done before winter started. Of course you bite your tongue and don’t mention that it was HIS 22 week delay. You are at his mercy.

On the day that dawns grey but dry, you builder turns up with five of his mates in tow. It is implicit that you will be paying for these inexperienced louts to drink your tea (with six sugars each) and read papers while leaving dirty fingerprints and footprints all over your home. This is on the understanding that your builder needs assistance from these lads. Mainly lewd suggestions and bacon-buttie-wrapper spreading. But god, they are GOOD at that!

After an interminable amount of time clearing up after them and living in a drift of plaster dust and mars bar wrappers, one day your builder states smugly that the job is finished. It has taken approximately eight weeks of howling gales coming through your gaping roof, filth and cheap tabloids EVERYWHERE, foul smells from the loo and endless amounts of tea and sugar but finally you are alone in your kingdom again. Your intact kingdom. No more rain coming in, no more sloshing buckets and mouldy smells. No. All you have now is a small re-decoration job. Bit of plastering, painting, small amount of re-wiring, bit of clearing up of buttie-prints from surprising places, finding the odd scrap of Page 3 stunna in your underwear drawer. Of course you won’t be able to afford tea or sugar for yourself since the job went over-budget by four hundred percent. Nothing major. But you do need help with that plastering and wiring. You start to wonder if Builder Man knows anyone who can help…