The (fu)tile mission

I like missions, they give a sense of purpose. To make sure I have the best chance at mission-success there's an evaluation and planning process which I always found fulfilling. Determining the objective, looking for the various ways to attain it and the merits of each, the process of finding the obstacles and the ways in which to mitigate them, then planning the mission from start to finish and finally deployment is a great process...What's not to like?

I have always found the process enjoyable rewarding and later, when the mission is in-play, it's the time spent in planning that gives it the best chance of success. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy intact, and one must be flexible, able to adapt to and overcome challenges, re-evaluate, be decisive and be able to pivot into new directions; there's a certain amount of fluidity required when it comes to goals and the process to reach them. I'm pretty good at all of this stuff to be honest; training, natural ability and a great deal of effort has made me that way...But I failed miserably on today's mission.

The tile mission

The image above shows my roof. I know, there's nothing at all remarkable about it. I don't think about my roof much, but in the last few days I have been forced into it. I'd rather be thinking about something else, boobs for instance, coffee and donuts, sleeping...pretty much anything else but my roof. But alas, I had roof-thoughts and they led me to the tile mission.

I'm having a solar array installed on my roof soon and that means a couple galoots romping around on my roof, moving tiles, affixing brackets to the roof trusses, doing wiring and replacing the tiles. This is going to, most probably, lead to cracked tiles. So, being the forward-thinker I am, I went in search of the spare tiles I have and...fuckety fuck, I only have three. It might be enough of course, but forward-thinker's like me always...well, forward-think. So I decided to get some more.

The (fu)tile mission

It was supposed to be easy, but after many phone calls my efforts proved futile.

I called the builder who constructed my house only to be told the tiles came from an interstate company. They also told me they don't deal with that roof tile company anymore and that was that. Fuckers.

I then decided to call the company directly figuring I'd have to pay a chunk of money to ship tiles here and...the company is now defunct. Fuckers.

See how no matter how good a plan is in theory, when in the field - when one deploys it - things can go wrong? That's ok though, I'm resourceful, accustomed to missions going awry and adapting to it...So I began to ring around to building recyclers; you know, those people who strip and demolish houses. I made call after call and this is how they went.

• Nope, got none mate.
• You're dreaming mate, you'll never find them.
• [Laughter] Yeah right, good luck with that mate.

You get the idea. Strangely, they all called me mate (an Australian thing) but unsurprisingly I wanted to be mates with none of the fuckers, especially after they failed to help me attain mission-success. Fuckers.

It was futile and I was beginning to think I'll have to come up with an alternative plan when the last chap told me to bring a tile to compare as he had some in his recycling yard. Ah yes, that moment when it looks like the mission will succeed after all. I took the one hour drive there, brandished my tile to the guy and, promisingly, he led me to the back of the yard where...he found one fucking tile the same of mine. One.

This yard is literally full of tiles mind you, I mean thousands and thousands of reclaimed roofing tiles, and in it there was one fucking tile that matched my own.

In the end I had to accept some tiles that, whilst not exactly the same, would do the job. They are a dark charcoal colour and just a little shorter than the ones on my roof but I'll have to work with it.

There's a spray paint product available that will take care of the colour so that's not so much of an issue, and I'll place the painted tiles, the slightly shorter ones, down at the very edge where the rain gutter is which will negate the fact they're slightly shorter. The existing tiles I take out will become my spares for when the solar install galoots break others and...that's how mission success happens folks!

_{Ok, so maybe the mission didn't go exactly to plan, but I'm going to declare mission-success anyway. Nothing is ever perfect I guess, and if someone gets on my roof and complains about several tiles being a little shorter than the rest I'll just tell them to fuck off. Politely of course.}