Jobs a goodun! Sky's back on - not only that, but it's amazing the deals you get when you speak to the cancellations department! Turns out the engineers were good lads. One of them plays golf - we had a good half hour chat about his course Trethorne, I've played there only once but we managed to discuss pretty well every hole, pond and out of bounds! It wasn't until he'd left and I googled Trethorne that I realised my mistake - I was talking about Tehidy! You just have to laugh!
I have a lot of ladder experience. Me and my mate Guy, set up a painting company when we left school - Paint Pals we were called. We got a load of leaflets printed up and dropped them through letterboxes far and wide. This was when I lived back in Surrey. To be honest, we weren't that good and there are many tales to be told. Anyway the ladder we had back then was a wooden one - if you used the full extension you could just about reach the top of a three story building. It was quite hairy at times. The higher you got, the more bowed it became and the more vertical the climb. Get up the last few rungs and you were dealing with an overhang. And it was so bouncy, I think it's how I developed motion sickness. You had to load the brush as the bounce took you away from the building, and then apply on the return! Hilarious. We quoted jobs on the anticipated bounces per hour! My Dad always said that our unique selling point was that we always left a ladder after every job - his!
Our first ever job, well to be honest it was a poor start. We had to gloss the window frames of an entire house. We did a good professional job, good clean cutting in, no splashes on the panes. However, when it came to leave the homeowners were no where to be seen, so being security conscious we made sure that all the windows were shut tight before we left. Didn't want anyone breaking in. If my memory serves me right, it took them a week to get the air circulating again! We didn't get paid for that one... or any referrals.
We became were very good at fitting windows. Not necessarily as part of the original spec - more as in haste to 'put things right' before the owners returned. Accidents will happen. One owner only found out that we'd had a small accident when the entire first floor of windows fell inwards during a breezy night. We should have used quick drying putty! I forget what the cause of the initial accident was.
We hauled (I could go on all day) Guy's brother in for one job. A prestigious restaurant in the centre of Dorking. We got the contract for inside and out. It fronted the main pedestrian walkway so neat and tidy was the word. I was on the flat roof, three storeys up, leaning over to paint the top bits when I heard this quiet voice. "Erm, boys. I've had a bit of an accident!" I left my position and went to look over the other side of the building to see where the voice was coming from. He wasn't there. He'd carried on around to the back! It was easy to find him. He'd spilt a whole pot of paint on his feet, on the main street, outside the front door of the restaurant! In trying to find us, he'd walked the entire way around the property, leaving bright white footprints in his trail. From my heady position, let's just say he was easy to find! The owner was particularly uncharitable on that occasion.
Our attempts at grass cutting were less successful! We were called out to a very posh house near Guildford to cut the lawn in preparation for their daughter's wedding the next day. Bit last minute, but we liked a challenge. The lawn was large and flat - the grass was long, a cut would make it fit for a Queen and perfect for guests to enjoy their champagne and canopes. We would of course come with our own equipment. To cut a long story short, both of our mowers broke down. So in their absence we borrowed theirs - a flymo! A flymo at the lower spectrum of Flymos - with a short extension lead. Hm, what to do! In the end we felt that it was better to do as much as we could rather than none at all. The resulting trim was met with very poor cheer! We argued, on deaf ears to be honest, that the garden party could go ahead without too much stress. The half circle with it's axis point being exactly at the point of where the kitchen window was open, gave the impression of an early crop circle. The short grass contrasting well with the long. We should be paid for our efforts under the difficult circumstances, we argued. He was a bad listener. Happy days, very happy days.
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