Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 November 2005 21:44:28
So. Here I am; belly the size of a bus, baby one week overdue, phone constantly ringing with people asking if I've 'popped' yet, and Husband and I are playing the 'waiting game'.
Problem is, it's not just the birth of our baby we're waiting for... we're also waiting for The Muppet to finish our roof.
Back in May we decided that now would be a good time to spend our carefully saved up pennies on re-roofing our house before the baby leaves us poor and penniless. We got friends to recommend builders, gathered quotes, and employed an efficent builder to come and give us a lovely new roof. However, Mr Efficient isn't a roofer. He takes on the jobs and then employs his brother to do roofs. And his brother... well, he's not Mr Efficient.
Previously I had always held to the belief that there are two types of builders: the good ones, and the con-men. But I was wrong, there is third type: the nice, but stupid ones. Mr Efficient is a good builder, unfortunately his brother falls quite firmly into the third category. We have taken to calling him The Muppet. He's lovable, well meaning, but fundementally a bit stupid.
For example, when the work started on the roof (in August) we asked The Muppet how long the work was going to take. His reply was "how long is a piece of string?". Helpful.
We tried asking the next day he turned up to do some work (which was about 3 days later). He told us that he didn't like to give himself deadlines since he was striving for perfection. Perfection could probably be achieved a lot faster if he did more than two days work a week, but I didn't feel like pointing that out at the time. We simply pointed out that we were expecting a baby at the end of October and The Muppet assured us he'd be long gone by then.
Well, he is mostly gone... the scaffolding got taken down two weeks ago and the indoor water features have been fixed (I'll tell you that bit of the story at another time if you ask nicely) but there are a few minor works to finish off. Like replacing the bit of plastic trim that got broken off the gable four weeks ago. At first The Muppet couldn't fix it because one of the lads he'd employed (definitely a type 2 builder) had stollen his ladder. Then he seemed to vanish off the face of the earth for a week. Then yesterday lunchtime he turned up on our doorstep, produced the bit of plastic from his pocket and cheerfully announced "I've been carrying this round in my pocket for weeks, I'll be back at about four to fix it". But by 4pm it was raining. The Muppet still hasn't completed the job.