The Two Decorator’s

July 15th 2006 

On the subject of Painter and Decorators there’s a saying ‘If you can piss you can paint’. There ought to be another, ‘If you can drink tea you can be a Decorator’ because that’s all the buggers who are supposed to be decorating our house seem to be doing.
 

I went back to our house at ten this morning for a small screwdriver as I couldn’t find one at Razza’s. When I got there the Two Decorators were sat around drinking tea. When I returned the screwdriver an hour later they were still sat around drinking tea. Weather they’d done any decorating in the meantime I don’t know but there wasn’t any evidence of it if they had.

“I’m not paying you two to sit around drinking tea all day,” I said.

“Price is just the same weather we drink tea or no,” said one of them. He pulled a piece of paper from his overalls and consulted it. “This is the living room right? The price we quoted you for decorating it is £450, no mater how long we take. Or how many cups of tea we drink.”

“Oh by the way,” said the other one. “”We’re using your tea. We ran out of teabags, I hope you don’t mind.”

Talk about bloody rubbing it in! “You’re  drinking my tea?” I said. “You’re sat in my house not decorating it and drinking my tea?”

“We’ll put it back when we get some. We’ve had ten teabags up to now, see we jot it down on the skirting board over there every time we take some.”

“Well just make sure when you do that it’s not cheep shit like Co-op 99, see that’s it’s Tetley’s or PG Tips.”

“Yorkshire Tea it’ll be. We prefer Yorkshire. Have you tried Yorkshire Tea?”

“I’ve got better fucking things to do than stand about discussing the relative merits of different brands of fucking tea, “ I said, finally loosing my rag.

“I was only saying. Only I’m a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to tea. So is Ted here.”

“You bloody well ought to be the amount of it you drink. Just see all your tea drinking doesn’t hold up the job and bugger up me moving back in when I have to.  So I want all three rooms finished by then or there’ll be trouble.”

Wankers.