Last week the rain came down like stair-rods all week. Bad enough, you would think, but it got worse.
In the passage between the garage and my wash-kitchen, lo and behold! A large pool of water appeared. It had not, as I originally thought, come in under the outer door, but had come in through the roof, run down the loft gable and continued on its merry way down to the concrete floor. (Thank heaven, it is a concrete floor.)
Problems abounded.
1) the electric cables to the garage run through that loft and down the wall that was wet!
2) The trap-door to that loft is the old-fashioned kind that you push upwards and thrust to the side.
3) That trap-door is about 4 metres above the floor and I hate standing on ladders and will not do so when I am alone in the house (which I always am, now)
4) Anyhow I have not the strength to lift that trap-door, even if I dared stand on a ladder and use both hands to attempt to move the trap-door, while clinging like a monkey with my feet.
You get the picture, don't you?
Solution: one of my neighbours - a good kind soul of the type you seldom meet these days, so I thought I would gladden your hearts by describing him.
Brought up in the depth of the impoverished Italian countryside, he has worked in Germany for years and now lives next door to me in Denmark.
We communicate in a weird mixture of German and Danish and when that doesn't work fall back on Italian and Spanish (my Spanish being better than my Italian).
The good man gave up most of his Friday afternoon to working out how to safely open that trap-door, that threatened to fall back down onto his head, and secure it, while standing on the third-top rung of a long ladder.
That done, he finally got into the loft and found out where the water was coming in, and that there was a tile missing from the roof,
So he came back down, took another ladder, found the missing tile, whole and hearty in the gutter, mixed cement and put back the tile and did a fair amount of pointing while he was at it. (Might as well use up the cement).
Tnen he cleaned the gutters and on Saturday went shopping for foam to insulate the cracks from the inside. Saturday night it poured, but not a drop of water came in!
Hope this cheers up your day, as it certainly did mine (and saved me a mint of money as he would only accept a very moderate fee for his time - plus a jar of freshly home-pickled beetroot and a bottle of home-made apple juice!
And I have a shrewd suspicion what a builder would have wanted for doing the repair. And I most assuredly would not have got a builder to come at quarter to five on a Friday afternoon!
It is nice to know there are still good, kind people in this world, isn't it?
Anyone else with good neighbours? I hope so.
"I know there are people worse off then me"
