Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
FINGS AIN’T WOT THEY USE’TA BE
32 years ago, we moved into the suburban house where we still live. It’s a two-storey house with a very high gable, and big enough to accommodate our larger-than-average family. But there were two things we didn’t like about it.
One was the fact that an open balcony allowed rainwater to drip into the dining room below – so we promptly had the balcony covered by a glass structure which turned it into a conservatory.
The other problem was the dark olive-green colour in which the house was painted, and the fact that the house clearly hadn’t been painted for many years. Paint had peeled off and you could see the original primer in some places. So my plucky wife and plucky I set about painting it – first the sanding, then the priming, then first coat followed by second coat. At my age now, it amazes me that we did all this, especially as we spent half the time balancing perilously on extension-ladders with a big drop beneath us. But despite painting the upper storey, we simply could not reach the very high gable, so there remained a tatty dark olive-green patch at the very top. Otherwise, we had transformed the house with a very much paler green paint.
About fifteen years ago, we decided it was time to paint the house again, but this time we knew we were no longer cut out for balancing on long ladders. We paid to have the house water-blasted, then we painted the lower storey. But for the upper storey we hired professional painters. Unlike us, they could reach the apex, so the last trace of dark olive green was obliterated. But these professionals still relied on long extension ladders to reach the heights, with much skilful balancing and daring feats of reaching as far as a ladder-borne arm could reach. We were glad not to be up there.
This year, we decided it was time to have the house repainted again, always choosing the same pale green tint that we chose 32 years ago. And here it proves that fings ain’t wot that use’ta be. Under current health and safety laws, painters can no longer balance on long ladders to paint upper storeys. Scaffolding has to be used. So after the water-blasting and before two professional painters arrived, in came a crew of scaffolding men who surrounded the house on all sides with heavy scaffolding.
I won’t say it was exactly like a siege, but when I looked out my study windows I could see new elevated walkways just below my nose. We had to carefully manoeuvre our way between heavy piping to get through both back and front doors. This was particularly tricky when coming home at night. As for our elderly cat, now teetering on the edge of feline senility, she went berserk, meowing even more pitifully than she usually does these days, at the sight of her house being deformed by this additional structure. One day she ran away. The next day she was seen sneaking along the fence-line in the back yard and looking suspiciously at the house that was not as it should be. Finally she settled for spending whole days squeezed behind an armchair in my study, her favourite skulking place when there is an electrical storm. She had somewhere to block out the thought of this horrible domicile transformation.
The painters did an excellent job. The exterior of the house has been renewed. We haven’t yet decided if we will ever have it painted again. The scaffolding was taken down in remarkably short time – but a very large part of the bill we paid went on the scaffolding. I’m still teetering on a mental ladder, trying to balance current safety rules against the additional costs that they require. But I suppose house painters don’t deserve to die of falls.
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