Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Dyslexic Tiler

Eric the Tiler has made a very good job of the floor tiles. But he’d left the wall tiles in kitchen and scullery for later. Then bright and early on Monday past, Eric arrived, serenading Bert as he came in, to complete the job.

So that has been my kitchen and scullery out of action for the past three days and one more to go. If it weren’t that Eric was such a pleasant sort of fellow my head would have exploded by now. Mess with my kitchen and you mess with my very soul. And being an honest sort of person I thought I’d share this with Eric.

Y’know Eric I’ll be glad to see the back end of you so I can call my kitchen my own again.

Is that right? Most people whose houses I work in say they get to feeling that I’m one of the family and they say they’re sorry to see me finish the job. They even send me Christmas cards afterwards.

Really? You’ll be getting no Christmas card from us. You can be sure of that.

Aye. Some of them send me Christmas cards for years. I wouldn’t mind if it was only the first year after the job but when they keep on sending them it obliges you to send one back.

I’d not bother myself with that if I were you.

There was this policeman’s house I worked in one year they sent me a card and I was writing them one back and as I’m no good at the writing I had their card sitting beside me to help me with the spelling of their names and then a week later I’m in the Spar and I ran into the policeman and he says, ‘Times must be hard Eric,” and I says, “What d’ye mean?” and he says, “We sent you a card and you sent it straight back to us.” And sure enough when I got home there was the card I wrote for them sitting on my mantelpiece!


I’ll miss Eric’s stories, so many of them unfit to print, but I’m not going to miss my messed up work site kitchen. Roll on Friday.

No comments: