On the Job

You know the feeling.

Everyone says that you should never put things off until the next day if there is an opportunity to do it today.

In most circumstances there are no significant implications of postponing an action or event for that brief period. For example, you delay posting a letter even though you pass the postbox on the way home.  There may have been no opportunity to get parked close by drifting along the road  in searching out a space you were actually getting much nearer your own house. The letter may not get to its destination any slower anyway.

My favourite is having something to take to the tip in the back of the car. I have carefully bagged up, secured and loaded it and even have the intention of going straight to the tip. However, traffic, motivation and intent wane and that item, even if degrading, giving off methane, other noxious organic odours or secreting thick residues onto the upholstery can accompany me for a few more days until reaching unbearable and unhealthy status as well as becoming an attraction to a small cloud of flies.

I am not alone in this regard. It may be regarded by Psychiatrists as being a flaw in my character, this hanging on to something I have in effect given a personality to. I may have difficulty in letting go something that I have worked on. I may just be lazy.

I was reassured just this week that other people go through the same thought process. The particular case was however a bit more extreme.

A plumber, long since retired was selling up his house which, occupying about 4 acres and in a remote rural location was getting a bit too much to cope with for him and his wife. They had lived there over 40 years and it had been a good base for his plumbing business in that there was a extensive range of large outbuildings including an ex wartime RAF Nissen hut and a huge purpose built workshop, dry and powered for all types of project, domestic and commonwealth.

As a sideline he and his growing family had also developed another business amongst the sprawling land and further, lesser timber sheds and buildings. This was a combination of garden centre, aquatics and poultry farm.

Being located on a busy road, inland but connecting a couple of seaside towns there was good passing trade. The entrance, in a bit of a blind dip and on a hazardous bend, was ideally positioned as an enticement for motoring tourists as they would prudently slow down to negotiate the highway obstacles. Carefully positioned signage on the verges about 1 mile north and south of the gateway also gave ample notice to the public of the impending attractions and an opportunity to browse but not necessarily buy anything.

For a good proportion of drivers and passengers the indication that there was a WC facility was incentive enough to stop. That last cup of tea at Bridlington was working its way through and causing some fidgety discomfort. The Auntie Edith's in particular would be relieved by the news of a comfort stop.

A wide range of goods and products were offered. These included Free Range Eggs from the poultry sheds, garden gnomes and ornaments some a bit outrageously phallic looking to Auntie Edith, plants, live fish and supplies for those with aquariums. The instruction for callers to sound their car horn on entering the site would commence proceedings.

As the business proved to be viable so the operation expanded. Large cast concrete ponds and pools were built to house Koi Carp and other coldwater fish accompanied by the buzz and whirr of pumps and filters to aerate and cascade the water. More sheds sprang up with gardening implements, seeds and fertilisers. Post and wire fencing formed small compounds to grow and display larger trees and shrubs. Many borderline decisions would be made by visitors as to whether leave Auntie Edith in order that her back seat position in the car could be filled with bargain plants and purchases or a large, crudely gesticulating gnome.

Other ideas could be catered for in the broad acres and under the watchful and attentive service of the family members. Perhaps the conservatory at the house could be used as a Café and Tea Rooms, the grounds for a petting zoo or commercial kennels and cattery, the Nissen hut although with gaping holes in the curved and dusty asbestos roof would be good for childrens parties or wartime themed dances and functions for friends of Auntie Edith.

However, the business reached saturation point. Expansion would involve a level of investment not otherwise sustainable or justified. The Local Authority wanted paperwork and fees for planning issues. The road was still dangerous. Critically, the children in the family were getting a bit older and the novelty of having to work their evenings and all weekends was wearing off as well as impacting on their youthful activities. The older kids found out that a similar job in the nearest seaside town actually paid a wage.

The plumbing business would have to support the other rather than the reverse as had been hoped for.

The surrounding towns and villages were expanding with new arrivals, retirees or those just wanting to live at or near the coast. Their first action, invariably, was to call in a plumber to rip out and replace bathrooms with a nice walk-in shower or fit in an en suite.

Our man got a good share of the available work through his undeniable hard work ethic. On an average of one bathroom project per month for forty years his pick-up truck and hitched trailer plied regularly, fully laden, from customers houses to his home base. The nearest Civic dump that he could use to deposit the acrylic baths, un-recyclable ceramic ware and shattered wall tiles was about 20 miles away. His intention had always been to store a few loads within his acres and in the Nissen hut until viable to justify hiring a skip or a drop side truck to take a bulk load to the disposal site.

Unfortunately, home and home-grown business demands meant that although Phase 1 for stockpiling waste was regularly fulfilled, the essential Phase 2 of removal elsewhere was not.

That explained my confrontation this week with  a strange array of multi-coloured bathtubs , hundreds of them within the boundaries of the four acre property.

Some had been put to good use. An undamaged acrylic or older cast enamelled bath makes an ideal growing receptacle. If the plughole can be stopped up on a more permanent basis then fish and pond life can thrive in it. Filled with clay soil or a light concrete mix a bath embedded in an earth bank makes an excellent retaining wall. The shape of a modern bath is akin to an animal feed trough and therefore well suited for that purpose. Sunk into a crazy paved surround an Ideal Standard diarrhoea coloured tub from the early 1980's looks like a rock-formed pond or pool. Even those fittings damaged during removal from a cramped bathroom could be adapted as an impromptu chicken coop. Other baths just sat around, idle, looking like  high-tec non-degradable coffins. In addition to the gawdy moulded bathtubs was a closely rivalling collection of wall mounted and pedestal hand basins but less functional for alternative uses. These were arrayed at distorted and disturbing angles, propped up against outbuildings and fences. They seemed to serve a vital role as a buttress to prevent the Nissen hut from rolling over into the dyke.

I did ask the plumber about the unusually large mound, under grass, that was a major but rather alien landscape feature about half way into the site.

It did resemble a prehistoric tumuli or the earthworks of a Medieval Motte and Bailey Castle.  He was evasive and tried to divert my attention. I suspect that it consisted entirely of a mass of fractured and smashed ceramic bathroom tiles that would, in the distant future, require an extended series of the equivalent of Time Team to reach some sort of rational explanation.