"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.
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Clutching my wallet and staggering backwards, I realised that at 拢13.42 (the price at the time), it would cost me 拢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. 馃槈
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 拢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."
My actual name is Pete. Here is why I have the username dickturpin.
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