An ill wind
Grandad March 8th, 2008
I believe there are high winds forecast for tomorrow night.
I hate strong winds.
I used to work in a job which involved working on the tops of ladders. And climbing a ladder in a strong wind is not funny, especially when you have both hands full of equipment.
We used to complain to the boss that there were safety issues, as we worked solo, and had nobody to hold the ladder in a wind. He told us to shut the fuck up if we wanted a job.
One day, it was blowing a storm, and I went into the boss, and told him it wasn’t safe out there. He told me to shut the fuck up and to get out there if I wanted a job.
So I went.
It was a rough day, and I had a few hairy moments during strong gusts, but I clung on.
I arrived at one house, where I climbed the ladder up onto a flat roof. I was up there, when there was another powerful gust. The ladder went. It went with a nice screech and a crash and landed in the next door garden.
Unfortunately for the neighbour, his car got in the way. A nice cracked windscreen, a lovely dent in the wing and a pretty pattern of scratches all down the front.
The neighbour came out, and he didn’t seem too happy. You see, he had bought the car, brand new, the week before and he was very proud of it. I had to stand on the flat roof and let him tell me exactly what he thought of me and my ladder and how he was going to wrap that ladder around my neck and sue me until I hadn’t a penny left. I let him finish and then had to ask him politely if he would mind very much putting the ladder back up again, as I was stuck on the roof.
Of course, by the time I got back to the office that evening, the car owner had phoned them and told them what had happened. I got called in and had strips torn off me for climbing a ladder in unsafe conditions.
You just can’t win.
When I left that job, I nicked the ladder. I still have it. In fact, I used it yesterday to clean my gutters.
But there was no wind yesterday.
