‘Just remember to get those screws in nice and tight and make sure the adhesive is spread like I showed you.’
‘Yep. I’ve got it, Trey. You go grab yourself a nice drink. I’ll get this done in no time.’
Trey laughs, claps me on the back, and makes his way back over to the ladder poking through the loft hatch. As he starts to descend he looks back at me. ‘And hey! If you do that okay, maybe we let you fix that hole you made over there, yeah?’ Trey laughs again and is gone from sight.
I try to ignore his reference to my fall from grace the first time I looked around the house, and busy myself with the task at hand.
Said task is a lot more difficult when there isn’t somebody standing over you, giving advice. What seemed like a relatively easy job with Trey by my side is most definitely not now that I am alone in the sweatbox. Manhandling a long, heavy length of wood around on your own is bloody hard, especially in thirty-five degree heat. It took Trey and I half an hour to do each of the other joists. I’m still at it on the fourth one a good hour and a half later. But I can’t leave until the job is done. I simply cannot climb out of this loft space with my tail between my legs, and let Trey know I have failed him. It just won’t happen .
Besides, as I peek out of the hole in the roof, I can see that the BBC camera crew have arrived for a day’s filming. There’s no Gerard O’Keefe with them today, but they’ll no doubt want to crawl over the house again to get shots of all the work going on. If it gets caught on camera that I am unable to do something as simple as fixing a roof joist, I will have to kill myself. I won’t be able to take the shame of it.
This leaves me in what you might call a sticky situation. I can’t climb down to ask for help, because it might end with my unwanted suicide, but that leaves me up here in Sweatsville still struggling to finish a job I started four and a half hours ago. I am hot, thirsty, hungry and tired.
Unfortunately, there’s something else I am as well – in dire need of the toilet.
Not for a pee, you understand. All the moisture has been leeched from my body by the heat up here. No, I am in need of a number two. In a house with no working plumbing and no toilet, given that it was ripped out last week. We do have a Portaloo in the front garden, but the bloody thing is broken (Baz’s fault I’m led to believe), so the nearest toilet that I can use to have a decent crap is now a good ten-minute walk away in the village.
It’s a tricky problem, and no mistake.
I try not to think about my rolling bowels, and continue with the slow and painstaking task of hammering the joist into the correct position. The bloody thing just won’t marry up with the ends of the old beam, no matter how hard I bang it with the hammer. The next twenty minutes are spent angrily tapping and whacking the wood this way and that to try and get it to fit properly. I’m only interrupted from the task when my bowels roll over a lot harder than they have previously, and I am forced to stand up, holding my belly and groaning in discomfort.
What the hell do I do now? Shuffle out of the house and hope I don’t have an accident while walking down the road?
No bloody chance.
Think, Daley, think !
Wait a minute . . . Wait just a damn minute!
I look around the loft at the detritus surrounding me. There’s not much up here apart from the work tools and lights Fred’s team have brought with them. But over in one corner, pushed out of the way so they don’t interfere with the workspace are all those empty wooden boxes I first spied on my initial – and disastrous – trip up here.
One of them is even about the same height as a toilet seat. And there’s old shredded paper in it that if you squint hard enough, you could mistake for a load of discarded Andrex . . .
I am immediately disgusted by the idea. What kind of lunatic would rather have a poo into a loft box, than act like
‘Yep. I’ve got it, Trey. You go grab yourself a nice drink. I’ll get this done in no time.’
Trey laughs, claps me on the back, and makes his way back over to the ladder poking through the loft hatch. As he starts to descend he looks back at me. ‘And hey! If you do that okay, maybe we let you fix that hole you made over there, yeah?’ Trey laughs again and is gone from sight.
I try to ignore his reference to my fall from grace the first time I looked around the house, and busy myself with the task at hand.
Said task is a lot more difficult when there isn’t somebody standing over you, giving advice. What seemed like a relatively easy job with Trey by my side is most definitely not now that I am alone in the sweatbox. Manhandling a long, heavy length of wood around on your own is bloody hard, especially in thirty-five degree heat. It took Trey and I half an hour to do each of the other joists. I’m still at it on the fourth one a good hour and a half later. But I can’t leave until the job is done. I simply cannot climb out of this loft space with my tail between my legs, and let Trey know I have failed him. It just won’t happen .
Besides, as I peek out of the hole in the roof, I can see that the BBC camera crew have arrived for a day’s filming. There’s no Gerard O’Keefe with them today, but they’ll no doubt want to crawl over the house again to get shots of all the work going on. If it gets caught on camera that I am unable to do something as simple as fixing a roof joist, I will have to kill myself. I won’t be able to take the shame of it.
This leaves me in what you might call a sticky situation. I can’t climb down to ask for help, because it might end with my unwanted suicide, but that leaves me up here in Sweatsville still struggling to finish a job I started four and a half hours ago. I am hot, thirsty, hungry and tired.
Unfortunately, there’s something else I am as well – in dire need of the toilet.
Not for a pee, you understand. All the moisture has been leeched from my body by the heat up here. No, I am in need of a number two. In a house with no working plumbing and no toilet, given that it was ripped out last week. We do have a Portaloo in the front garden, but the bloody thing is broken (Baz’s fault I’m led to believe), so the nearest toilet that I can use to have a decent crap is now a good ten-minute walk away in the village.
It’s a tricky problem, and no mistake.
I try not to think about my rolling bowels, and continue with the slow and painstaking task of hammering the joist into the correct position. The bloody thing just won’t marry up with the ends of the old beam, no matter how hard I bang it with the hammer. The next twenty minutes are spent angrily tapping and whacking the wood this way and that to try and get it to fit properly. I’m only interrupted from the task when my bowels roll over a lot harder than they have previously, and I am forced to stand up, holding my belly and groaning in discomfort.
What the hell do I do now? Shuffle out of the house and hope I don’t have an accident while walking down the road?
No bloody chance.
Think, Daley, think !
Wait a minute . . . Wait just a damn minute!
I look around the loft at the detritus surrounding me. There’s not much up here apart from the work tools and lights Fred’s team have brought with them. But over in one corner, pushed out of the way so they don’t interfere with the workspace are all those empty wooden boxes I first spied on my initial – and disastrous – trip up here.
One of them is even about the same height as a toilet seat. And there’s old shredded paper in it that if you squint hard enough, you could mistake for a load of discarded Andrex . . .
I am immediately disgusted by the idea. What kind of lunatic would rather have a poo into a loft box, than act like
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