Friday 8 January 2010

Roofing update

The re-roofing project at Chez Szondy is almost finished, though it had a fairly shaky start. Aside from the weather problem and needing to constantly soothe a pair of dogs, one of whom is a hopeless neurotic, I discovered that the roofers had sub-contracted to a firm called Howard, Fine & Howard ("We've got shingles!").

I had some misgivings when as soon as they arrived two of the roofers dropped their tool bags on the feet of the one with the pudding-bowl haircut who then slapped the other two and dragged them off by their ears, but they all seemed enthusiastic, so I let that pass. However, I'm not sure that OSHA would be too happy if they'd seen the the roofers hit each other with a ladder eight times in thirty seconds and then upsetting a bucket of tar that landed square on the head of the balding roofer with the insanely curly haircut.

Of course, I was holding a swank dinner party while the roofers were there. I didn't anticipate any problems, but when we sat down I discovered to my horror that the roofers were at table as well dressed in the worst-fitting tuxedos I'd ever seen. I tried to bluff it out, but before I knew what was happening the fat one was having a fight with a bowl of oyster stew that kept eating his spoon and squirting milk at him while the other two were trying to crush each other's noses with nut crackers. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but one thing led to another and suddenly the 60 assorted cream pies I had sitting on the sideboard were flying through the air and I was knocked out by a flower pot that fell off a shelf for no readily apparent reason.

I woke up a while later in hospital faced with a doctor who was smoking a huge cigar and I swear a mustache and eyebrows made out greasepaint and he asked me to turn my head and whinny, but perhaps that was the concussion.

3 comments:

Neil Russell said...

Those contractors have gotten away with a lot by instilling a false sense of security when hiring them, who could resist the zeal with which they chant: "At your service day or night, we do the job and do it right! AaaaaaaaaaCME!"

jayessell said...

At least they weren't plumbers!

Sergej said...

Hey, if there's a bottle of seltzer water hanging over the fireplace in Act 1 of a Three Stooges sketch, you know that it's going to be sprayed in someone's face in... uh, Act 1.