Kevin Page: Stuck on a roof - I'd rather be vacuuming

Mrs P is inside the house listening to Rod Stewart on her earphones and vacuuming oblivious to Mr P's plight on the roof. Photo / Getty Images

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We are getting a new roof put on our house.

It's one of those simple, flat ones with no gables or tricky bits to contend with. In fact it looks like it would be so simple to replace I wanted to do it myself to save a few bob.

Mrs P was having none of it.

We needed a professional job done by tradesmen with the appropriate skills, she said sternly.

I knew I was on a hiding to nothing.

Years ago I'd assured her I was more than capable of knocking up a simple fence at the back of our then house. I won't bore you with the details but as far as Mrs P is concerned the fence was/is wonky. As far as I'm concerned "somebody" gave us the wrong materials. Plus it's out the back where nobody will see it anyway.

But I digress. Our new roof.

As I say, there was no chance she was going to let me have a crack at it myself. All I could do would be to get the ladder out as I did last weekend, climb up and walk solemnly backward and forward across the roof in a vain effort to look like I knew what I was doing and that it was, in fact, something useful.

Mrs P meantime busied herself inside the house listening to Rod Stewart on her earphones and vacuuming, which, depending I guess on your musical preferences, could sound just about the same.

What to do when the ladder's come away from the roof? I'm yelling for Mrs P at the top of my voice but there's no response. Photo / Getty Images

Anyway.

I'm up on the roof checking the whatchamacallit and the thingamabob when my ladder decides to slip away and crash to the ground. So now I'm stuck.

Down below Mrs P has heard nothing of the commotion above her. She's dancing with the vacuum cleaner as Rod belts out the classics. He's in her heart and soul I guess (boom, boom).

Then to make matters worse it starts to rain. And I'm talking a downpour of biblical proportions.

Naturally I'm now yelling for Mrs P at the top of my voice and stamping on the roof to try and get her attention. No response.

And all the while the rain belts down. There's no cover up top. By this stage I'd be dryer if I'd swum Cook Strait fully clothed.

My yelling, screaming and stomping has attracted the attention of a neighbour who has raced over in his yellow all-weather outfit to see what all the commotion is and whether someone is actually being noisily murdered atop my house.

Instead he finds a bedraggled, soaked individual who looks like he's been left on the roof courtesy of a tsunami that roared through while nobody was looking.

Thankfully he works out what has happened and, through his laughter, he gets my ladder back in place and I climb down to escape my prison.

We trudge round the side of the house to the front where, through the deck ranch slider, we spy Mrs P, still boogeying and vacuuming.

She looks up startled at the odd duo standing on the deck.

"I've been calling," I splutter, thankful to finally have my head above water.

"I had Rod on," she smiles as if to say I should know that the necessity to listen to the gravel-voiced rocker overrides any and all cases of emergency, including rooftop drowning.

"But didn't you hear me jumping up and down and stamping on the roof," I say somewhat exasperated as I peel off my sodden garments.

"Oh, was that you," she laughs. "I thought it was thunder".

• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to kevin.page@nzme.co.nz .