"Sixty-seven quid? I like that price!" The wife looked at me with that look that has taken wives years to perfect: Why did I marry you?
No, it wasn't sixty-seven pounds, it was sixty-seven packs! What the hell! I'm not tiling the house, you know. Sixty-seven packs are a lot of tiles. The woman designer made a sweeping gesture with her hand. "They've got to tile up the wall." yeah, but not right to the ceiling, and we've got wall-mounted cupboards.
image source
Clutching my wallet and staggering backwards, I realised that at £13.42 (the price at the time), it would cost me £899.14 just for the tiles, let alone the grout and the sealer. With moist eyes, I fed my credit card into the machine while the wife dreamed of saucepans and knife blocks.
As the wife and I pulled up to Castle Cannon, I noticed the kitchen Fitter had put our oven out for the scrap man to collect. In the part of the UK where I live, lots of people with transit van pickups cruise the streets looking for anything metal that homeowners put out. Far be it for me to suggest that they're tax dodgers. 😉
I saw our extractor hood sitting by the cooker as we pulled onto our road. "What the hell! He's chucked the extractor out. We're keeping that!" I pulled onto our drive as quickly as possible and lept out of the car. Just as I picked the extractor fan up, a bloke bellowed at me from the main road:
Scrappy: "OI! I'm f'king having that!"
Me: "No, you're f'king not!"
The wife and I went into the house and were talking to the fitter in the kitchen, scolding him for putting the extractor out, when a guy, who had walked up my drive, through my side gate, and into my garden, appeared:
Scrappy: "Your mate has just nicked my metal!"
Me: "It's my metal, and it's my house. Do you want to fook off!"
Scrappy: "You taking the boiler out? I'll have that."
Me: "No, we are not. Do you want to get off my property?"
Scrappy: "What about them pipes? Can I have them pipes?"
Fitter: "Mate, take the pipes and fook off!"
The next day, the fitter put our old kitchen sink out. Within ten minutes yet another scrappy scooped it up.
A van pulled up the next day, and the delivery guy clutching some packs of tiles knocked on the door:
Driver 1: "There you go, mate, thirty-one tile packs."
Me: "Where's the rest of them?"
Driver 1: "Dunno mate. These are from Nuneaton."
Me: "Nuneaton? Christ, that's miles away!"
"Wouldn't it be funny if those tiles came from all over the West Midlands?" I said to the wife.
A short while later.
Driver 2: "There you go, mate, seventeen packs of tiles."
Me: "Seveteen? Where's the others?"
Driver 2: "Dunno mate. These are from Handsworth."
Me: "Handsworth?"
Finally.
Driver 3: "There you go, mate, ten packs."
Me: "Ten? But I'm missing nine packs?"
Driver 3: "Dunno mate. These are from Cannock."
As it turns out, I was only due to receive fifty-eight. When I paid for them, I was so distraught I didn't bother to look at my invoice, which, of course, I dug out, ready to complain. I actually took nineteen packs back, which means we only used thirty-nine with a £254.98 refund, which should keep Barclaycard happy.
In part 4
"Ooh, these tiles are gonna be a problem."
"The plumber is having a right game with the radiator"
"Let's replace the kitchen and front room doors."
Image created by irisworld
My actual name is Pete. Here is why I have the username dickturpin.
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"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
Dealing with the trades is always fun. We just had a big patio laid. He said the slabs might be tricky, but it all turned out okay and he's actually a good guy.
We have a local scrap guy who will take stuff away. It can be less hassle than taking it to the tip. I've been clearing out some old electronic bits and the council will take some of those. Not worth selling.
Yeah, I went to my uncle's funeral in Kent, and my cousins (One in Kent and the other in Scotland) hadn't heard of these scrappers roaming the streets, so it must be a Midlands thing. We seem to have loads of them.
I'll be coming back to the tiles in part 4
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