So last week I get a call from "Jane" who lives in a tiny cottage in a group of about ten in two terraces in the middle of one of my villages on the edge of Bristol. They can't find a window cleaner and she and 4 neighbours want one. Trouble is to get to them parking is a nightmare but the end cottage has a drive I can park on and hopefully do them all by running a hose up the fronts and another up the backs.
I scout it out and say I can do it and say to her £10 each but if one of them pays all of them and collects the rest I'll do it for £42 the lot. (Tell her it's pole not ladders at this point.)
She emails me back to say "OK, yes please". I turn up today.
The guy in the cottage on the end with the drive has parked his car across his own gates. Fair enough, I ask him to move it which he does. I go to drive in and he says "you can't go on the drive I've only recently had it tarmac'd" (Now I know it's not been done in the last 10 days because I went there to price it up and it looked no different)
So I explain that my hoses won't reach the farther cottages if I can't park there.
Him: "Why can't you park in the road and run them in from there."
Me: (Manfully resisting the urge to ask him the purpose of a tarmac'd drive if not to park on it) "Because I paced out the distance and I'm on the limit if I park in your drive."
Him: "Just take your ladder off, they're only little houses."
Me: (Instantly deciding to drop the lot but to play a bit further) "What ladder is that sir?"
Dan: (Chiming in politely) "We don't use ladders any more sir."
Me: Reversing away (can you flounce in a van?) "Perhaps you'll explain to your neighbours that they will need to find another window cleaner."
And that - as usual - was that.
