Danger

I started a book last night and it could be a problem. Reading one I mean.  It was late when I started and there was a bit on my mind and despite that it was starting to grab me even though I knew I had to go to sleep.  It's just lucky that somebody woke me this morning to give them a lift somewhere and I didn't get time to lay my hand on it then or that would have been me till bedtime tonight.

After I'd given that lift I came home to discover the rim of the toilet bowl had broken off again.  I glued it together with superglue about three months ago, because at the time the landlord didn't sound that keen on replacing a broken loo, so it's done pretty well really.  (As an aside I can say from this that toilet duck doesn't clean under the rim). Anyway it's not that much fun ringing up to hear the landlord wince at the thought of maintenance, so I decided there and then that I needed some araldite.   We also needed  bit of school uniform from town and some cricket gear and apparently some shelf brackets for shelves I'm going to put up, from Mega. So those of us that were left bundled into the car to go foraging. The book, for now forgotten lay by my bedside waiting.

It was a short trip, only about two hundred dollars long, and when we got back I put together some toasted sandwiches for lunch.  While I ate them I thought with distaste about gluing the loo back together.   I decided (buying some time) that I might be able to do some of the assessment for that QS course I'm doing by correspondence if only I could find the bit of paper with the questions on it.  I had, for the moment, forgotten the book, which is by Clive Barker. Clive Barker is one of those authors I don't read often, but can't put down once I start reading.

Sadly the piece of paper was exactly where I thought it was.  I had no choice. I laid a dirty towel on the puddle in front of the loo to kneel on and began drying out the broken pieces of rim with an heat gun.  Then I mixed up all the araldite (my dad used to be so measly with it) and smeared it over everything I could think of and pushed the pieces back into places.  My hands were all over it when somebody came in and asked me if I would make some more toasted sandwiches when I had finished. Do you really want that? I thought, looking at where my hands were.  The book lay waiting.  Do you know somebody once gave me a trilogy for Christmas and I didn't speak to anybody until the day after boxing day?  No books for me at Christmas please, save them for the winter holidays when there's more of an excuse.

Well, it all seemed to be sticking and the araldite had filled them holes from missing shards quite nicely, so I got up and made those toasted sandwiches.... no wait... I got up and washed my hands and then made those toasted sandwiches.  Then I sat down with the question paper, the plans, the course book, the take-off paper, the calculator and my copy of NZS4202 to look at the assessment.  It consists of taking-off-quantities-for-sheet-vinyl-flooring-in-an-amenities-building-making-allowances-for-extra-value-over-coved-upstand-skirtings-and-enumerating-all-internal,-external-and-irregular-mitres-and-for-cutting-and-fitting-to-openings,  all laid out neatly according to the conventions described in the standard and not missing anything out.  I got up to find a pencil.

You know obsessive reading runs in the family... I remember when I was eight or nine my brother would come home  from university exhausted.  After sleeping for thirty hours or so he would rise and make his way to the bookshelves in the hall.  When he'd selected ten or twelve books he would return to the lounge, pausing only to grab the fruit bowl from the servery, and lie face down on the three seater couch, his feet dangling over one end and his head over the other.  To one side he would stack the pile of books and to the other he set the fruit bowl.  I remember watching for hours on end in fascination as he rhythmically turned page after page. The pile of unread books gradually got lower and lower, and the stack of read ones grew.  By dinner time he'd read them all and emptied the fruit bowl too.

Anyway I've now got half of that assessment done, and a list of questions for when I ring the tutor in  the morning.  Everyone's in bed and the lights are all out and I've just remembered that book.  I won't be able to find it in the dark... but when I get home from work tomorrow it will be waiting...

All the best,
The Gedle