It is typical, my friend calls every 2 or 3 weeks. I have another Italian friend who will call occasionally. You can guarantee that he will come to see me the same day as my friend. It was so today. It was nice to see him though.
My Friend comes and brings me things that I ask him to, does any odd jobs that I need doing, stays for dinner and if I have any veg spare I will give him some.
Today was really no different only that we began to talk about work at the Car Park and Kiosk where I had my last business.
It was always getting broken into so when I really got to know him we suggested, well he was far more handy and knew what was required. Incidentally, there was a man who was responsible for authorising repairs to any Council property. A handy man to know. He was one year younger than me and had been working for the Council for just a year. He told me that he had been a site foreman in charge of many contractors. My friend listened to this, as he was thinking about having a new wall round his bungalow, asked him if he knew of anybody who was a bricklayer. He told him that he could do the work for him. Eventually went to see my friend, told him that about 800 bricks would be plenty. My friend ordered 3 pallets about 900 bricks. Well by now the late spring had turned into early summer. My friend would call at Quick Save and bring bits and bobs for me. He then started to talk about the building of the wall, or to be more precise, the lack of building. As the weeks went on, I could tell as soon as I saw him if any progress had been made. He told me that every time he came to do some work, he would ask his mother for some paracetamols as he had a headache. Eventually my friend noticed that the pile of bricks was going down but the wall was not growing at the same rate. He investigated and noticed that each brick that was cut in half, the remainder was discarded, with I might add lots of cement, as he would make a load of mortar up but only lay perhaps a dozen bricks then sling the rest of the mortar away. My friend had then to order another pallet of bricks. I had been warned. It took him about 4 months to do a weks job.
When the repair man found out that I was considering work on the building to make it secure, he told me that he would be willing to help me. When I told my friend, he said no way at all.
Anyway he told me that we would do the work together during the winter months. Incidentally there was going to be improvements going ahead on the Car Park. As it happened this worked out in our favour.
I think tomorrow I will tell you about making the premises safer.
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As I may have mentioned we used to be involved with canal narrowboats and the holiday industry. One particular boatyard where we had some work done operated a little like your friend.
ReplyDeleteThis guy's trick was to start the work on your boat - usually by taking something out, or knocking a hole in the roof or something else which meant that you could not really move the boat away.
Having done that, all work would stop so as to keep you at his boatyard buying your diesel fuel, your bottled gas and coal, if it was winter, from him - plus all those little items of groceries you suddenly find you've forgotten etc. etc..
If you asked when he might resume working on your boat you'd get a long and complicated story about all the 'emergencies' which had kept him busy and all the other jobs which were now overdue and in the queue ahead of you!
Of course this just happen to you or to us - after a month or two there were several people sitting on their disabled boats wishing they'd gone to a different boatyard!