2. Is it OK if…. ?

‘Phone rings Friday evening about 8 o’clock, just as settling to dinner. "We’re coming on Monday morning. Is that OK?"

"What? Who is that?" I splutter. "It’s the builder. You remember, we said we were coming about now, and we’re ready." Strange mental conflict ensues as outrage that we weren’t given more notice fights anticipation that work is actually about to start. Anticipation wins. "Yeah, OK, see you after the weekend."

Monday morning and a (not very big) truck comes swaying down the drive, rolls to a stop, and half a dozen builders tumble out. The truck is packed with gear: scaffolding, cement mixer, wheelbarrows, boards, ladders, shovels, tools. And suddenly, these geysers are everywhere. Much excited talk, and realise they’re working out where to put this and that.

They turn to me. "Is it OK if we put the cement mixer over there?" "Yeah, no problem." "And the scaffolding. Is it OK if we stack it here?" "Yeah no problem." And so on and so on. Resigned to the fact that house is becoming a building site. Well, obviously.

And they start unloading. Ever seen one of these industrial scale cement mixers manhandled off a truck? No, I hadn’t either. There’s a preliminary planning session, in which all feel they have the right solution and insist on shouting it over all others and to the world at large. Then the gripping and grunting, the straining and staggering begin. Any planning ideas have long gone by now, and the shouting has an edge to it, even sometimes a note of panic. I turn away, no longer able to look. But eventually it’s off the truck and in position. The rest of the equipment follows in easier loads.

Finally the work gets under way, cement gets mixed, stones get laid, walls grow, and all seems great. Start to relax a bit. Wrong. Am subjected to a stream of requests for this and that, always delivered in a way which clearfly suggests that I’d better go along with them or the work will suffer. And we don’t want that, do we?

"Is it Ok if …… we use your wheelbarrow?" "Sure", I say. What can they do to a wheelbarrow? Well, they can complain about it. "The tyre’s nearly flat", they say, "you need to pump it up".

"Is it OK if …… we use your chainsaw? The chain on ours has broken." "Er, no, that’s OK." It’s just been sharpened, has fuel and oil and is ready to go. The slight but obvious hesitation in my voice brings the response "Well if we can’t use it we’ve got a problem and it’s going to delay the work". "Well, OK", I say, "just remember to top up the chain oil every time you refuel". "Yeah, we know all about that." Right, I think, then how come the chain on your saw is broken?

"Is it OK if …… we use your extension lead?" Can’t be any harm in that, can there? "Sure." Only to be reprimanded in minutes because "it’s broken". Check this by sticking an inspection light in the outlet socket, holding the glowing bulb aloft to demonstrate that, actually, my lead is OK, and it must be your connection mate. Builder curiously reluctant to accept this, but in nanoseconds gets the ball back in my court by asking me to fix his connection.

"Is it OK if …… we use …" well, any number of my tools, really. Fall into the habit of constantly checking their whereabouts and condition.

And, excuse me, but the hawking and spitting is heroic, Olympic, never-ending. They might be on the ground or two floors up. Always put a few metres between myself and the scaffolding when walking around outside the house, wear a hat and try to establish people’s whereabouts before looking up. Amazingly, get used to it in time. Even acts as a kind of alerting mechanism. Lying in bed in the morning, just awake, greeted by morning chorus of throat throttling. "Oh God, is that the time?" I think. "They’re here already. Better get up and see what they want me to do today." Sorry, had to get that off my chest, as it were.

But finally, there are just a few small jobs to finish off. Then, it’s packing away of kit, loading it back onto truck with the same circus feats of lifting, swinging and shouting, and holding of breath as the next near disaster is negotiated. Nearly time to say goodbye.

And then there it is. There has to be just one more doesn’t there?

"Is it OK if …… we leave some of the scaffolding and boards at the top of your garden? We’ll be back in a couple of weeks to collect it." Any temptation to do anything other than go along with the idea is tempered with the relief that the job is finished, and any reluctance quickly abandoned. And guess what, after months we’re still waiting for it to be collected. But it’s out of the way and some of it comes in useful from time to time.

So all I’ve got to do is clear up. To say the place looks like a building site doesn’t really make the point. Inside and outside the new building are piles of detriti. To clear it, I pace myself by setting out to move a fixed number of wheel barrows a day. Too knackering in the heat otherwise. And then there are the empty cement bags. When I’ve given up counting them, I start to wonder if there is a way of recycling them. The place must be held together with cement. Well, yeah. And if not with cement, it must be with wire. Funny, but I can’t recall a delivery of ten miles of wire. But I’ve found most of it now, lying around in one foot lengths.

Well, what was I going to do for the next couple of weeks anyway? At least it’s all over now. And that’s a really stupid thing to say, as you’ll see when I can bring myself to relive another close encounter of the builder kind.

So.

Is it OK if …… I go now