Boilerman's Tale

Team Garage Pixie

The Boilerman's Tale

We had The Boiler Man round the other day. He's been round a couple of times and he's a nice sort of bloke, and we exchanged wibbles over his furtlings in our flue. I learned about boilers and how busy he is, he learned a bit about bikes - and then he told me his tale, which I feel the need to share with you.

He confessed to me, you see - he is a recidivist. He had given up smoking and after eight weeks reckoned he was well on top of it - put on a few pounds, done a few aniseed balls, but the cravings were weakening and it was looking good. Then his wife went away to Spain with her friends over half-term, leaving the boilerman at home, in charge of three kids aged 5 - 9, four spaniels (age not stated) and the builders who were completing asmall extension. The extension completion was mandated before the wife's return, as is the way of such things.

It rained a lot over half-term, so the kids and dogs were in the house a lot. Together. A lot. Resolve weakened, but he didn't crack.

The builders came and went as they tend to, and most of the works were finished apart from the roof. The boilerman didn't like the roofer.

The roofer was an enormous chap of dreadful aspect and sorry appearance. Possessed of a monstrous inverse waistline (more of an equator, truth be told), tiny legs and with stringy curls framing his permanently sweating face, the roofer portrayed ill health and the penalties of continuous beer consumption to an awful degree.

Matters came to a head four days into half term. The roofer had turned up at ten (two hours late), the weather had dissolved into a soggy mizzle, the kids were chasing the dogs who were chasing the kids
and the place was in uproar. A free and frank exchange of views twixt boilerman and roofer had taken place, the boilerman doing his level best to maintain a position upwind of the roofer and not to swear too much, too loudly. The roofer had finally acknowledged the importance of his task and had grudgingly taken himself off to the far side of the extension.

As the boilerman stood at his patio door, steadfastly ignoring Sodom, Gomorrah and the first day at Passchendaele being re-enacted to his rear and overlooking his almost-finished extension, he drew on his freshly-rolled fag as a shaft of sunlight pierced the overcast. Through the raindrops on the glass, the boilerman watched the roofer wobble his bulk up the far side of the roof. The shaft of sudden
light enhaloed the roofer, causing him to glow with a golden nimbus.

The roofer reached the ridge, looked up into the unexpected sun and, dazzled, stumbled. Flopping onto his belly he went, sliding across the rain-slicked synthetic slate as a penguin across an ice floe, vestigial legs kicking vainly in an effort to control the slither. Style points were lost as a feeble grab at the guttering failed and the roofer sailed down onto the patio, performing a flawless bellymark landing.

The impact rocked the house to its foundations and the boilerman to his. Admonishing the kids and dogs to stay inside, he slid the patio door aside and strode toward the stricken roofer, accompanied by the inevitable circus of kids and canines. The roofer rose remarkably quickly to his stumpy legs and with a commendable degree of poise, merely waved a thick and tattooed arm towards the boilerman as he made a hurried exit to the rear of the extension, presumably pubwards, to drown his embarrassment.

Nothing more was seen of the roofer until eleven the following morning. Another exchange of views took place: the roofer pale, sweating and shaky - his eyes mere slits in the pocked pudge were
still identifiable as pink pain-filled pissholes. The roofer admitted to being a little stiff after the landing the day before and explained that roofing was a very dangerous job, the most hazardous in the building industry and that it should only ever be undertaken by trained and skilled professionals, of course. The roofer further admitted to a long and arduous session in the pub as anaesthetic had had to be taken. But he was fine now and undertook to get on with the job with despatch, in order to make up for the loss of the previous day. The boilerman had over-reached his lung capacity by this point and retreated, nauseated, to the kitchen, where he rolled a god-sent fag and watched the roofer prepare to ascend the extension.

The roofer's first task was to prepare his access equipment: he braced his wooden stepladder with a couple of carefully-chosen joiner's offcuts and a few roofing nails and taking his hammer in hand, climbed the steps. Seeing that the job was at last under way, the boilerman took his accustomed position at the patio door, comfortably wreathed in sweet Virginian smoke.

The boilerman watched as the roofer stepped carefully off the steps and over the gutter, onto the verge of the roof. Always the critical point, it was apparent that the roofer had mixed his footwork a little and had managed to step onto the cuff of his somewhat overlong industry-standard baggy tracksuit bottoms. As step followed shortening step, the overstretched waist elastic gave up the unequal struggle and allowed the tracksuit bottoms to slide from his equator towards his Southern pole.

The boilerman watched in horror as the roofer's mighty twin moons hove into view as the non-executive nylon reached the roofer's knees. Aghast at the sight of the heaving pustule-pocked cellulitic buttocks, hairy ring only briefly covered by of all things, a dirty green thong - the boilerman strode to cover the eyes of his children. Distracted to the degree that he was unable to tear his own gaze from the roofer's mountainous arse, he managed to crack two children's heads together hard enough to distract all three from the awful view outside.

Disentangling himself from wailing children and anxiously over-attentive dogs, the boilerman returned to the patio door. The rain and beer-sodden roofer, seemingly oblivious to his plight, struggled on towards the ridge with ever-shortening steps until the collapsed tent of tatty black nylon finally wrapped round his ankles and with a final convulsive jerk the roofer's arse duck-dived over the ridge.

The smack of belly on synthetic slate echoed once again across the patio and the slide went "Fffffuuuu ... "and then the foundations shook again as a mercifully obscured and largely naked roofer hit the deck on the far side. The boilerman made his best speed around the extension, dreading what he would find ... but there was nought. No beached whale aground in a puddle of its own blood and snot, no pathetic wreck buried in rubble. Just a large peach-shaped clean-but-a-little-oily patch amongst the buildery bootprints on the concrete and a space where the roofer's van had been landed across the road.

The roof remains unfinished, the wife remains unspeaking and the boilerman is on twenty a day.

Nothing is known of the roofer.

Last updated 19 July 2006