Site Visit
From the same assigment as the last piece. Both were too short to submit anywhere, but I'm fond of both of them.
We hitched up our trousers, gave up worrying too much about our shoes, and picked our way between the muddy puddles of the embryonic estate. The site office was empty, so we pressed on through no-man’s land. A sentinel builder must have recognised Jacquie from her frequent check-up visits, and given a warning too high-pitched for the rest of the human race to detect, for suddenly every craftsman on the site bolted for cover into houses other than ours.
If we stood on chairs and strained our necks we could see from the bedroom window of the place we were renting the measured development of our new home. Through the spring and early summer it had flourished, and we had talked excitedly about moving in for the start of the new school year. But we had forgotten about the estimation of the building trade. Autumn rains had delayed things further. We were now seriously worried about moving in before Christmas, when our rental lease expired, so this, my first visit to the breeze-block shell on which we were shortly to spend our life-savings, was supposed to be a kick-ass mission.
The trouble was, there was no bum-cleavage to be seen. I nosed around as far as I could and fretted. The roof let in an alarming amount of light. A floor board creaked behind me, but when I poked around suspiciously with my foot the planks, like a class of naughty schoolboys, were unanimously silent. And it was all so small. Nothing like the spacious show-house we had set our hearts on. We would have to sue. Jacquie said it was because it wasn’t decorated yet. Once the walls were painted it would all look different. How did she know? How many houses had she built? Apparently the builders had said. But they would, wouldn’t they? They could hardly hold up their hands and admit: “Sorry guv, you’re quite right. It’s only two-thirds the size of what you signed up for.”
We looked next door, and found some plasterers drinking tea. Why weren’t they plastering our house? The foreman had told them to work in here. Where was the foreman? They looked evasive - probably number 101. In number 101 they said try number 143. There they thought he was in the site office. Cross and depressed we gave up and went for some lunch. We would be back, with even muddier shoes, to resume our hunt for suitable backside.
