I returned to the house at four in the afternoon, assuming they would have finished, replaced the panel, pulled the front door closed and gone home. Of course they hadn’t finished. When I wandered in through the garage one of the men was holding on to the back of the trouser belt of another so he could lean forward and extend the long handled tool he was using to smooth the concrete all the way to the opposing wall. What would normally be an eight hour job might, they thought, take them until nine or ten in the evening because of the difficulties the sub-zero temperature was causing with the process. They said I should tell the neighbours that they were about to start using equipment that would “sound like a Harley Davison gang revving their engines”. I knocked at Brian and Julie’s door but got no answer even though Julie’s car was in the drive. It’s highly likely she saw me walk in the driveway and hid. Before heading back to Vicky’s I sent a text to Brian; “Hi. Just called at your place but got no reply. Our kitchen floor is being laid today. The workmen are about to use machinery that may just be audible to you. Sorry for any inconvenience. Patrick”. You may recall that over recent months Brian and Julie have chosen to completely blank us. I imagined Brian at work, sitting at his desk, with lots of pens and pencils in neat rows, in an office the size of a cupboard fighting back tears as he read my message and felt the love, admiration and respect contained within it. He was so overwhelmed by emotion that he couldn’t find words that would convey what he felt so he just texted “OK”.
Marianna and I returned to the house in the evening to clean and tidy in preparation for moving our things, and eventually ourselves, back in. The men were still there revving their Harley’s. We left them at 9.30. They thought they’d be finished at midnight. At 7 the next morning we had a call from Greg, leader of the painting team, wanting to get into the house. However, when we got there the painters were already in the house. The men working on the floor had only finished at 5.45am and their supervisor had been over to inspect the work and so was able to let the painters in. The floor looked really good. Which is what you’d expect for twenty two and half hours work.
I hadn’t met Greg before. He told me that electricians and plumbers were sloppy but his team, as finishers of projects, were different. Marianna told them several times not to walk on the kitchen floor because a couple of days were needed for the finish to dry. I told her it was unnecessary to keep telling them, not with the added reminder of the pieces of wood we’d crisscrossed across the doorway. Marianna headed off to work and I went to an assessment in Birmingham. Of course when Marianna called at the house later there were footprints across the kitchen floor. We hope they’ll fade.
On Wednesday we had an early meeting with Max who was noting all of the final little jobs that need doing. He was concerned about someone breaking in and stripping out all of the radiators, showers etc. Albanians do it a lot apparently. Pete had said he’d be there on Tuesday but called Marianna and now wasn’t sure he’d be over that week at all because he’d had so many emergency call outs. Max called him. I’m not sure what he said but both Pete and John appeared thirty minutes later.
The good news of the week was that I finally received payment for a court appearance I made seven months ago. There had been some dispute over how much they would pay me and, rather than get nothing, I settled for an amount that was about 60% of what I’d normally be paid. In error they sent me the full amount.
The bad news, and I’d struggle to explain why it has distressed me so much, is that the cabling hidden behind our paint and plaster means that, unless we want holes drilled and visible cables, we can only have broadband and telephone supplied by SKY. I have little firsthand knowledge of the company but I put them in the same category as the BNP, Adolf Hitler, Sharon Osbourne and McDonalds; that there’s just something intrinsically evil about them.
