“Do a job and meck a job!”

 

“Do a job and meck a job!” my grandmother used to say scathingly in her thick Yorkshire accent, as she drank her tea and scowled at my grandfather.

He’d probably just brought into the kitchen a prize winning cabbage, but also unluckily a trail of muddy footprints.

My grandmother’s tongue lashings were famous.

Some days I hear my grandmother’s scathing words aimed at me.

Like today!

It was a simple job.

There was just a little bit of rubble trapped behind the radiator from when the new window was installed in the bathroom.

The plan was… I’d loosen it and then vacuum it up…simple. It was a two minute job…if that.

The vacuum cleaner seemed to be stuffed with pine needles. I’d have to empty it first.

I walked down the garden to the compost heap, successfully emptied it and was on my way back when I stepped into something; something soft and slimy, something foul smelling and evil, left by a cat.

I do the mad backward slow shuffle dance routine scraping my shoes on tussocks of grass, providing the afternoon’s bizarre entertainment for my curious neighbours.

Eventually, I returned inside…frozen.

I find a knife that I can use to free the trapped rubble; and then old wisdom kicks in.

There was a time I remembered when I’d once used a vacuum cleaner to sweep up similar broken pieces of plaster. The dust had choked the machine to death. I don’t want to make another expensive mistake.

I go off in search of a dust pan and brush.

Everything has to be taken out from underneath the sink. The plastic bags had been breeding again. I sort them out and put them all into just one bag. It takes ages.

Eventually, I carry everything upstairs; and set to work with the knife.

The plaster falls the very short distance from where it was trapped and sends up a suffocating mushroom cloud of fine dust right up to the ceiling. I open the window gasping for fresh air and the dust swirls even deeper into the room.

Wall paper then falls from the wall and I tear it free, creating new artistic triangles thankfully hidden behind the radiator.

I brush up 99.999% of the debris; and then vacuum up the rest.

Instantly, the vacuum cleaner’s filters block.

I have to disembowel the vacuum cleaner, take out the filters and wash them. Thick wet wads of dust now block the kitchen drain. I put the filters to dry on the radiator sending socks tumbling somewhere else.

I free the clog from the drain and make a mental note that I will now have to clean the sink.

I put the dustpan away and celebrate a job well done by making a cup of tea.

I take one just one sip of my tea, and put the mug back on the table… but instead the mug catches the corner of a thin book and tips over.

Time slows when something is about to fall and spill its contents all over the floor. You can see it all in hideous slow motion: the gradual tilt of the mug, its bright red colour catching the light; the tea falling in a small brown spreading waterfall; and slower than all the rest, a hand desperately trying to reach it across an infinity of space.

There is now a sea of steaming tea soaking into the carpet.

I pick up the unbroken mug, dash downstairs for a cloth and return to start scrubbing the carpet.

The cloth now needs to be washed; I put it into the washing machine, I’ll have to sort that out later.

Of course, somehow, I manage to step into the wet patch. I now need dry socks.

I peel off the wet ones, pull on dry ones and take the wet ones into the bathroom to place into the basket. Ill have to wash them later.

At least I’ve done the job I congratulate myself

And that’s when I see a new small pile of plaster heaped beneath the radiator from god knows where!

And all I can hear are my grandmother’s words.

“Do a job and meck a job,” she mocks from beyond the grave. “Do a job and meck a job,”

And I, with my grandfather’s genes, slink out of the bathroom defeated.