It was a dirty job but someone had to do it - Kevin Page

Builder Boy was sensibly kitted out for his unpleasant job, writes Kevin Page. Photo / 123rf

Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief that laughter helps avoid frown lines. Page has been a journalist for many years and has been writing a column since 2017.

OPINION

I’m sure most of us at some time will have been under pressure to get an important job completed.

Such was a case this week involving our son-in-law, Builder Boy.

He and the Boomerang Child and their two sprogs have joined us in our current location for a bit of R and R.

Well, at least that was the plan. It hasn’t turned out exactly that way for Builder Boy.

Let me explain.

No sooner had he rolled to a stop, slid on his jandals and cracked the top of a cold one, his phone rang.

Yes, he was in the area for a while, he told the caller. Yes, he would be looking for a bit of work. In fact, he’d be happy to do anything. Any time.

Right now he might be regretting saying that.

Long story short, the caller had a job he needed doing urgently to fit in with some other tradies who were already at the starting gate and just waiting to be let loose on a renovation.

Being the sort of bloke he is, Builder Boy accepted the job and a little over 12 hours later he was on site and up to his armpits in it. Literally.

Now, I can’t profess to have any experience in the sort of work Builder Boy was undertaking but one look at his face after a couple of hours head down, bum up, told me it wasn’t that pleasant.

Essentially what he had to do, on a very hot day, was crawl around in a small ceiling space of an old cottage undergoing wholesale renovation below.

In that confined area, he had to shift and sort several different layers of insulation. Before he could put any of it back in place, he had to vacuum up inches of dust, dirt and a fair amount of rodent droppings.

Thankfully, he was sensibly masked and attired but, because there was pressure to get the job done as quickly as possible, he took only two or three breaks in the eight hours or so it took to do it.

These breaks mainly consisted of his face appearing at the small, open hatch into the roof where I would hand him a water bottle and a wet cloth. He’d drink a bit and try to wipe the sweat from his face. Then he’d be back into it.

I felt guiltier and guiltier each time I called him to the hatch.

A few years ago I’d have been up there with him doing something, anything, to make the job go faster.

Unfortunately, my dodgy hip – and the fact the rest of my arthritic body seems to be going out in sympathy with it at present – meant I was confined to the room below where I was keeping a sparkie company as he ran some cable.

We both agreed we had the better end of the stick when it came to the jobs on site that day but nonetheless our conversation turned to awful jobs we had been involved in, like the one keeping Builder Boy gainfully employed.

Sparkie recalled a time as an apprentice when he’d had to crawl through a tight space under a house to reach something or other and had found himself in the middle of, er, a plumbing malfunction – I’ll leave exactly what to your imagination - which resulted in him ending up all wet. And very, very smelly.

He’d been suffering from a head cold for a few days prior and had not picked up on the odour wafting out from under the dwelling when he’d poked his head through the access hatch.

To make matters worse, his boss who arrived sometime after he got out from under the house, insisted he hose himself off before even thinking about getting back in the work van.

Having spent most of my working life in offices, I had very little to offer by way of a similar tale – though I did once get typewriter ribbon ink all over a clean white shirt which was never quite the same after.

I still get very emotional about the incident and find it difficult to talk about. Ahem.

In all seriousness, my only awful job story anything like that was when I was working as a reporter for a city newspaper many years ago and went to a house to interview a woman who had been the subject of some complaint.

It was one of those occasions where I needed to get both sides of the story to see what was going on.

I recall walking up the garden path to knock on the front door was a challenge, with rubbish and all manner of discarded items strewn everywhere.

The interior of the house was little different but the woman herself was extremely polite and hospitable and offered me a seat.

That posed another challenge as literally every surface was covered with some kind of rubbish, wet laundry, dirty dishes, used nappies ... you name it.

My attempts to find a clear space to sit proved fruitless so she motioned me towards a large bed in the corner which was again, covered in all sorts of things.

As I went to sit on the edge of the bed my attention was captured by something moving in the middle. It was a baby. The thought of it gives me the shudders to this very day.

So eventually, Builder Boy finished his task and came out of the roof, covered in muck and filth and most likely a couple of kilos in sweat lighter.

When last spotted, he was headed for a shower. I suspect it was a very long luxurious one.

Back at home base later on, I recounted the episode to Mrs P and asked her if she’d had any yucky jobs in her career.

As a long-time nurse, she’s pretty much dealt with every bit of yuck the human anatomy can offer up but one particular event was stuck in her mind, she said.

A patient had arrived with a huge, painful abscess on his back which required immediate attention and Mrs P, along with an equally experienced associate, were tasked with its draining.

To this day she knows not exactly what happened but somehow the almighty lump turned volcano and erupted the second they touched it.

Smelly, icky gunk spurted forth, hitting the two nurses positioned right in front of it and continuing on to the ceiling above them.

Eeewww, I hear you say, dear Reader. Eeewww indeed.

Obviously, when it comes to yucky stuff like this, it’s not always just the person doing the job who is under pressure.