by whitley » Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:16 pm
The old bricklayer song reminded me of something that happened to my dad and this is absolutely true.
About 30 years ago my folks moved into a 1930's built house which needed a bit of work doing on it. One of the first jobs tackled was renovating the bathroom.
To best understand this story you need to understand the layout of the house.
On opening the front door the staircase was in front of you and a bit to the right. At the top of the stairs was the bathroom door. The toilet was facing the door, the wash basin was to the left of the toilet as you looked at it and the bath was on the far left. Above the toilet was a window which opened onto the back garden.
The plumber we employed to do the work was family friend and my dad and myself were his labourers. The basin and toilet were removed with no trouble and dumped in a skip.
The bath was a different matter as it was a particularly big one and made of cast iron and very heavy.
Room was tight for enough people to get the bath down the stairs so the plumber and myself acted act the brakes and steering as we guided it, upside down, down the stairs and out of the front door. For added safety we tied a rope round the bath, threw it out of the window and my dad, who in all honesty was under tall for his weight, would hold onto the rope to act as another brake.
All went well until the plumber missed a step while walking backward down the stairs and he let go of the bath, but I couldn't hold it by myself.
Now my mum was in the kitchen, which was directly under the bathroom and looked out onto the back garden. She was surprised to see my dad running quite fast toward the house tugging on a rope and even more surprised when he proceeded, at equally high speed, to scale the side of the house while all the time uttering obscenities.
By the time the plumber and myself had the bath under control again we at the front door, but my dad was by the bathroom window. We later found out that he had wrapped the rope around his waist and tied it. Unfortunately the plumber and me didn't know my dad was dangling at the bathroom window and we removed the rope from the bath, which, of course was the only thing countering the not inconsiderable weight of my old man.
Now while my dad was rising in the world, he was thinking on his feet, well perhaps not his feet, anticipating that we might not know he was up the wall and so undo the rope which of course we did, but my dad had the presence of mind the make a grab for the window frame so he did not fall.
It was while we were undoing the rope that our next door neighbour arrived to inform us that for some (at least to him) inexplicable reason, my dad was in an unusual predicament.
Now I ask you, has anyone tried to raise a ladder while having extreme difficulty in breathing because of almost hysterical laughter and blinded because of the tears flowing down our faces? It was not helped by the non stop, fluent flow of profanities being uttered.
You will recall that the toilet had been removed which was bit unfortunate for my dad, who after his adventures was in dire need of one.
