In one of those strange non-appointments, Roofer John turned up yesterday morning to fix the roof on the extension. He hadn’t told me he was coming, he just turned up. The first I knew about it was when Builder Dave sent me a text to say he was outside the house. I texted Dave back telling him I was on a train to Portsmouth.
We had a long exchange of texts and I thought it was all over until I arrived home from work at 5:30.
The first clue that someone had been there was the two used coffee cups on the terrace table. The second was the fact that the extension ladder had moved along down the side of the house. The third, and most obvious, was the fact that the roof looked as good as new – clean and fresh.
I didn’t find out what had happened until I spoke to Mirinda later. It seems that Roofer John turned up and knocked gently on the front door. Mirinda was asleep and wasn’t best pleased when she poked her head out of the bedroom window.
She heard someone indicate that they’d seen her. John had gone to Neighbour Dave to ask if he had a key (I guess). Anyway, Mirinda fumed her way down to the front door and asked them why they hadn’t let us know they were coming.
John said he forgot.
Anyway, they set about cleaning the roof, drinking a coffee then bidding Mirinda farewell as she left for work. She wasn’t there when they left so neither of us had any idea if they’d finished or not.
Water was still dripping (albeit very slowly) into the yellow bucket all evening, so I had no idea what they’d done apart from cleaning the roof. I texted John asking him what he’d managed to do. He texted me back, saying they’d cleaned, dried and relaid the entire roof.
And the best news (not that I’m getting too enthusiastic quite yet) is the drip stopped before I went to bed and didn’t drip all day today even though it didn’t really stop raining. A note of caution, though. While it did rain all day, it was very light. We still need a jolly good torrent to really test it properly.
