The Shit Manager

Max called on Thursday evening to say that he had happened upon Malcolm the architect and Malcolm would prepare a drawing of the guttering for Martin to be ready tomorrow. This was just as Marianna and I were ready to head out and rip Martin apart. We decided that we wouldn't go and see him until we had the drawing. This was disappointing since I was in the mood for killing someone. We went to the house anyway to see what progress had been made. Of course, Martin turned up with his ringbinder to show us some types of gutter he'd found on the internet. I think it's because I was so preoccupied with my foul mood that I don't recall all that was said but we made our temperament and disinterest very clear. We told him we didn't want his internet findings and weren't going to engage in a discussion. He clearly thought this was very unreasonable. It seemed that we repeated variations on 'No, we aren't entering into a discussion. You'll get a sketch from Max and that will be the end of it'. When he said 'What if I don't like the sketch?'. We told him that would still be an end to it. He mentioned that there was a British Standard to which these gutters should be made and we should have checked on what Max would supply. I have faith in our builders I told him. He said he didn't and needed to rebuild trust with them. Marianna pointed out that whether or not he trusted them was irrelevant because they were our builders. I said that I generally had faith in people and if he didn't, if he had trust issues, he should address them. It may sound bad but I enjoyed how clearly taken aback he was with how clearly pissed off with him I was. When I said I didn't care about his guttering he pulled a face like I'd just jumped on his pet kitten. And off he went. We didn't bother with goodbye.

The sketch by Malcolm didn't turn up on Friday. We visited the house largely so Marianna could hang out with all of her new friends; Mark, Tom, Pete etc etc. I've noticed that she's been buying them biscuits. I'm not too pleased about this. Firstly, it's at our expense. Also, if they're eating they aren't working and if they're eating biscuits they'll get fat and work slower.

Marianna discovered that the boyfriend of a friend of hers works for the same company as Martin. It turns out that he is a sewerage manager or a shit manager as Marianna now insists on calling him. In fact every time his name is mentioned she says "He's a shit manager".

Max called this morning to say that a copy of the guttering design was at our house and a copy had gone next door. Martin sent a text this evening which read "PLAN RECEIVED AND ACCEPTED. LETTER POSTED THROUGH DOOR". I was a little disappointed. There wouldn't be another verbal boxing match. It seemed like winning a competition when your competitor has dropped out through injury. Then came a second text minutes later which said "NOWHERE TO POST LETTER. WILL PUT THROUGH DOOR TOMORROW". He's not very observant. The letter box went with the door the day that work began.

Ever Decreasing Circles

Oh what a circus, Oh what a show. It’s been a far from great week. I got up at five on Monday to work on a report before heading to Doncaster to see a client. When I got back I carried on typing (one of the less racy Carry On films). On Tuesday, with the report still unfinished I was up at 4.30. I really can’t imagine how this happened but all of the previous days work was lost. Perhaps a computer genius or eight year old boy could have found where it was. But I am neither and neither were readily available to me so after a little cry I went back to typing. At about 8.30 I discovered that some papers I needed were in the storage unit so I had to drive over there and find them.

Then Martin called. (Please begin playing the Simon Bates ‘Our Tune’ music). My Mobile, like every other one on the planet, displays the name of the caller so when I answered I said ‘Hello Martin’. He gave his full name and address just in case I knew dozens of other people with that Christian and Surname combination. He said that the builders had completely cut off his exposed joists along the entire length of his garage and when he complained to Max he said he wouldn’t stop and that Martin could watch him do it if he liked.

When I got back to Vikki’s I told Marianna who called Max who only said “I’ll call you back”. Since I had a meeting to go to she raced over there.

I wasn’t there so I can only summarise what has been relayed to me but she spent 90 minutes in discussion with Max and Martin who were largely refusing to speak to each other. Max, awkwardly, had told Martin that morning they would be lifting his tiles. He didn’t mention the joists. When Martin complained “You can’t do that”. Max said he could, it was what was agreed; ”Watch me”. During the discussions no work was being done. Roofers, carpenters and bricklayers loitered. Martin threatened to withdraw permission and Max threatened to leave our house unfinished. Marianna pleaded with him to be polite and keep Martin informed and he refused. Martin confessed that he knew they would be working on the guttering and had chosen to work at home that day for that reason. He said that Anne was in tears and he doesn’t normally get angry but was very angry. I wish I had the energy left for such a range of emotions. He kept saying that if Anne were out there engaging in the discussion she would tell you to ‘F off’. Marianna wanted to say ‘Bring her out here then’. The man’s a fool. Marianna could out punch him, or anyone, verbally but she was being restrained and diplomatic.

To prove the depth of his arseholery Martin wondered what would happen if the people who bought the house from us in the future didn’t like the first floor of the extension and wanted to remove it. WHAT?? Have you ever heard of people buying a house and saying ‘Darling, we’ve got too much room. Let’s remove a floor of the house’. He also wondered how the owners of their home, after Martin and Anne had died (possibly at my hands) would feel about the shared gutter. These are the sort of fears and thoughts that normally come from our clients. They are not reality. I’m not being paid to treat him so I’m not interested.

Max hadn’t done as we had all agreed or as he had sketched because, he said, that when he got up and looked at the roof this wouldn’t be possible. Should two psychologists have spotted that Max would turnout to be like this? I thought we’d made it clear that only 40% of this job was building and the rest was keeping Martin and Anne happy. Martin thought this was all part of a conspiracy and it had been Max’s and our intention all along to cut the joists. Of course, they weren’t cut to the degree Martin had said. The carpenter had taken about ten percent off them. He thought we must have known what was happening and what would be happening each day. Marianna said she didn’t, we don’t, we’re not builders. I don’t need to know every step of the process. I didn’t have an extension and at some point in the future there will be an extension. I don’t need to know what happens in between.

He complained that the builders hadn’t ever knocked on his door to inform him what they were doing. Marianna said ‘So, they’ve never told you what they’re doing?’. ‘Yes, they have. I go out and ask them every day, it’s just that they’ve never come and told me’. ‘Well, you’re out there as soon as they arrive’.

I forget how it all played out next. Martin wrote a very stroppy letter, threatening court action, saying that Max had breached our agreement. Max wrote a reply saying that it was Martin who had breached the agreement. On the phone to Marianna on Wednesday Martin said ‘Thank god I was there to protect Anne and the children yesterday’. From what? A carpenter cutting some joists? You being a tosser? He should meet the people I meet. He should try living their awful, abused lives and he might see that having his guttering altered is not the end of the world. When he rang she asked how he was and he said "Okay, considering that neither of us slept last night". This morning we went to the house. Pete the plumber’s dad and workmate handed over a second letter Martin had delivered to him. He wanted an itinerary of what the builders will do on different days for the whole build and detailed designs of the proposed guttering. I rang Max. We agreed that Martin wasn’t getting an itinerary but that Max would make a drawing.

It was, I think, Martin’s second letter that sent me over the edge. I am currently livid. There’s no other way to describe my mood. At the end of the day I or we will visit Martin and I will leave him in no doubt as to my current opinion of him. If it seems that I’m being unreasonable all of this involves him because he took advantage of an old man and built over the boundary. It’s as if he hit me with his car and expects me to pay to have my blood cleaned off his bonnet. We’ve spent a year pandering to and appeasing him and it’s ridiculous. I will be making it quite clear that it ends now, his mental health issues are not my concern.

Think about your troubles

Marianna declared herself to be in a state of panic about the house this morning. She feels that we are doing nothing but compromising. Martin and his guttering shrank the garage, the bizarre world of brick/half brick has shrunk the huge doors we imagined having, we can’t have the top floor windows as we wanted them or even as Basil had them and budget constraints means that there are constant compromises anyway. Max called late yesterday to say that we can’t have the dining room or front bedroom windows as we wanted them (the same as they currently are only able to open) because the panels are too big. Basil clearly left the house as it was because rules and regulations changed. We went to the house to measure the wall and gaps again. What we hadn’t realised was that the doors we want come in standard sizes and our holes were meant to be those standard sizes. Only Willy from Signal Construction was there, digging holes for drainage, so we didn’t discuss the rear wall. Pete was there. He’d been busy yesterday. Huge areas of floorboard had been lifted and pipes that had once been beneath it were piled up in the rooms. He said Max had already been there and was measuring the rear wall again. Perhaps he was having doubts. We spent an hour or so with Pete finalising where radiators will be. Marianna asks a lot of questions and says about five thousand words to every one I feel it necessary to utter. He explains things very well and I have faith he’ll keep us happy. We haven’t done anything else about the rear wall yet.

Compromiscuity

Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that I’m still gorgeous. The bad news is that we won’t be building what we thought we were. The plans were not really plans as in some firm set of instructions agreed upon by all parties. They’re more of a guideline, an artist's impression of what we’ll build. Imagine going into a restaurant and ordering chicken and the waiter brings you beef. Well, it isn’t actually beef, it’s a cow. It’s a cow dressed as a chicken. In the end you’re grateful that you got something. I think that’s how we’ll end up feeling about the house.

We were there fairly early yesterday morning but found Pete the plumber and his dad rather than anyone laying bricks from Signal Construction. Pete was going to spend the week there and wanted us to make decisions about what sort of heating system we wanted, what type of radiators and where we might want them. He has a normal haircut now rather than the moptop he was sporting months ago when I met him and since that was the only characteristic I registered I really wouldn’t have recognised him had it not been for the company logo on his shirt. Everyone we meet is wearing t-shirts or polo shirts with logos on them. You don’t get them in my profession. He’s a lovely man and was good enough to make a recommendation on the heating system so that was an easy decision. No one else seems to do that. They just tell you there are 300 to choose from but give no guidance on which would be best for you. Obviously, when whatever it is is installed and completely inefficient then they’ll tell you you chose the wrong one. We left Pete to collect some bathroom catalogues Marianna wanted to show him and find a set of plans on which we could mark where we wanted the radiators. Marianna called Max about the rear walls and he called back half an hour later. He was at the house and couldn’t see any problem with the wall. We rushed back there.

He explained that he won’t be building the house as described on the plans because that refers to metres, centimetres and millimetres. He’ll be building it in bricks. His two forms of measurement are
The Brick
and
The Half Brick
It is for that reason that our doors will be smaller than we thought/wanted them to be. I don’t know why we haven’t all adopted this form of measurement.

Q. How tall are you?
A. 16 Bricks

Q. Are we there yet daddy?
A. Nearly. Only another 190,000 bricks to go

It still wasn’t clear why the holes were smaller. Why hadn’t they made them bigger and the amount of wall smaller? We went there determined to demand that he knock it down and re-build it as we wanted it and we silenced as soon as he explained the half brick/brick issue. I recognised his negotiation technique from when he and Martin met over the guttering. He doesn’t really negotiate. He just tells you the way it is and dismisses anything you might say. You feel as if you are without knowledge on not just this but all subjects and remain silent. If only it had been Matthew. He’d have knocked it down. We then did a little tour with Max. The next task was to replace the second floor dormer roof but it’s now clear that the whole thing will need to be re-built. So, he’ll scaffold above the rear extension, rebuild the dormer and install the new windows (although they won’t be as wanted them). We also discussed insulating the top floor and the loft and a few other things which we had assumed he would be doing. He kept saying “We’ll have a look at it”. I wasn’t sure if this meant “I don’t want to do it now”, “I don’t want to do it”, “Let me work out how much more that will cost” or “I’m giving you back to Matthew. You’re a pain in the arse”.

This process is just compromise after compromise. And moving further and further away from where we originally wanted to be.

Like a Chippendale

I think it was during the glorious summer of 1976 that Marianna and I began stripping the woodchip wall paper from the walls of our home. It’s what we did last weekend and what we’ve done for all of this weekend. And several dozen weekends before too. It’s been a bit of a slow news week, possibly because we aren’t living there to see everything that happens. Marianna visits regulalrly. She knows everyone by name. A few more weeks and their menstrual cycles will be synchronised. Max seems to have replaced Matthew this week. Marianna was missing him. Max called her on Tuesday afternoon to say that the makers of the windows couldn’t make them as we wanted them on the second floor and then he called her on Wednesday to ask why we hadn’t made a decision on the new design because it was slowing the project down. He was coming across as pretty pushy and impatient. Marianna thought he had stepped in because Matthew wasn’t progressing things quickly enough. Marianna almost definitely has AD/HD and declared herself bored by about midday yesterday but we carried on and returned to Vikki’s at 7.

Yesterday, from the top floor I was able to (casually) observe Martin cut his back lawn, lower the blades and cut it again and then go over it again with a strimmer. When he'd done all this he had a well deserved nap in the garden. Today he spent five hours cleaning his car. When we were in the garden this afternoon their daughter got our attention and handed over a building supplies delivery sheet that was in their garden. I thought she might have written “Help, rescue me from my OCD parents” on it. Marianna arrived at the house one day this week and caught him loitering, clearly waiting for the brickies to arrive. She ushered him away.

We sat on our deck chairs amongst the wreckage in the back garden for ten minutes this afternoon for a little lunch break. We looked at the rear of the house and noticed that it didn’t look as symmetrical as the plans intimated that it might and there seemed to be a lot more wall than we thought there would be and a lot less door. We measured and sure enough the holes for only two of the three doors are the right size but aren’t where they should be. Words fail me at the moment. We’ll have to call Matt or Max tomorrow.


Yesterday Marianna said that I have been rather cruel to Martin in these notes, that I’d held him up to ridicule and that I’ve violated his privacy. I don’t think that’s fair. I’ve portrayed him very positively and always respectfully. His privacy has never been violated. She thought that there is a risk that one of the three people that read them will declare themselves to be his cousin, sister, best friend or masseuse. What do you think?

Mr Clean

We spent the weekend stripping wallpaper. When we arrived at the house on Saturday morning Martin was cleaning and vacuuming his car. When we arrived this morning Martin was vacuuming his car and he was doing it again six hours later. Now, it may seem that I’m paying a little too much attention to him but you have to wonder why someone would spend so much time cleaning his car. The only time my vacuum cleaner and my car have come into contact in the past five years was when one drove the other to the storage unit. I feel there are several possible explanations for all of this cleaning.

A. He‘s a henpecked little man who’s so desperate to avoid his wife he’s inventing tasks outside of the house.
B. He has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
C. Anne has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and will only travel in a spotlessly clean vehicle.
D. He has some appalling habits which he only lets loose in the car
E. His children have some appalling habits
F. Err?

He has become a sizeable pain in the arse. Like a child who goes from one parent to the other with the same request hoping for a different answer he asks me, Marianna, Matthew, Willy, the brickies the same questions about when things will be done, how they will be done and how much of a mess we’ll make of his property. Marianna has to be kept away from him in order to avoid gaining a criminal conviction. She tried to launch a mutiny on Saturday morning and suggested that we should pay someone to strip the wallpaper. This makes good sense given the speed at which this work is progressing. I gave her permission to seek someone out but in the meantime to get back to where she was supposed to be and get scraping. Rain is forecast for the week which will slow the build down. Poo.

Is a temporary wall the same as an occasional table?

We visited the building site/house yesterday for an inspection. Marianna has been visiting regularly. I imagine her and the bricklayers braiding each others hair. Martin had called me on Tuesday and left a message requesting an exact timetable of the building work so they can book their summer holiday before or after the guttering and roof is dealt with. I told him to speak to Matthew. Just after we got to the house Anne appeared in their garden. We’d already heard her complain to Martin that he’d come home and gone straight out to work in the garden without saying hello. Our building work will be responsible for their divorce. She mentioned the timetable and said Matthew had been very vague. We told her that only he could provide an answer. Martin stropped around their garden and didn’t speak to us. Although it was only three bricks high we were initially pleased that the bricklayers had begun building the wall of the new side extension and the replaced rear extension. However, Marianna noticed that it was an inch and a half shorter than the plans and the footprint of the old extension said it should be. We’ve spent months arguing with Martin over reducing the width of the house and so we don’t want to give away the length. We decided to return first thing this morning and ask Matthew if there was a reason why we were going to have less house than we’d hoped for. So, that’s where we were at 8am. Matthew looked at the bricks, measured the plans, measured the wall, got a little annoyed and said it would have to be knocked down. We agreed and that’s what the two bricklayers began doing. I was pleased that he made no fuss at all. Well, not with us. He said that Martin had called him and he’d been intentionally vague because he thinks he’s a tool. We wandered around the house to discuss various things including windows and floorings. Matthew knows his stuff and obviously there are some things we are knowledgeable about but when he explains things I feel that we’re just a couple of monkeys playing with their own faeces.

A wall that lasted a day