Tradesmen can be a pain in the neck or , at the other extreme , someone good enough in their work to be grappled to one's bosom with hoops of steel .

We have recently had an unhappy and expensive encounter with a plumber : one of the breed of tradesmen that seems to come in for a great deal of opprobrium . Fortunately the incompetent job that he botched was corrected by a most charming and pleasant substitute person , who repaired the deficiencies with just the slightest sneer at the job done by the previous one.

Thinking of that experience took me back to remembering the tradespeople associated with Dondingalong , particularly the the plumber who installed the requisites in the house there . I had never even met him while the house was being built , as he was a subcontractor to our builder , Ray , who knew what I wanted as far as being able to have house access to both tank and dam water just in case the tank ran dry . It never did , so there was never a problem there.

I have no complaints about his work at all , even though he did have one minor problem . I noticed one day that there was a growing damp spot on the back pavers of the veranda , just below the laundry window. It was not a burst pipe , obviously , but I rang Ray and he came out promptly in the mid-afternoon with the plumber in tow . The plumber greeted me with a complaint that he had been called away from a leg of pork that he was cooking .

That statement stays firmly in my mind , because I immediately associated the man himself , I think with good reason , with roasting pork .He was very short , and reminded me immediately of the song Mr Five By Five . Despite already having some pork in the oven , he may not long have left a job that day , because he was still dressed in his work clothes , including the boots and the most inappropriate pair of short shorts that one could expect on one of his girth . His face was red , not with sunburn or such , but with that kind of rosy shine that one associates with roast sucking pig .

I felt I should offer him an apple .

With all that , he and Ray took but a moment to diagnose the problem . It was then that the plumber expatiated , in a very colourful passage of conversation , upon the problems of working out of town on blocks where he couldn't test the brazing of the joins in the pipes because he didn't have the water pressure available .

He came next day and fixed it in a couple of minutes , still grumbling a little . Ray himself took advantage of the incident to point out to me when they removed a weatherboard that our walls were indeed properly insulated . Personally , my faith in him was such that I had never doubted it anyway . And at the same time , let me insist that apart from that one miss , the actual plumbing job was excellent .

I do have to say however that I would never want to rely on that plumber's plans if I had wanted to find the drainage outlets from the septic tank or from the bathroom and kitchen waste pipes . I did take a peek at them later . but to me they were more of a Dufy style sketch . Yet I must confess that wherever they were precisely did not matter , as the soil in the general area sustained a good growth of vegetation.

Michael and his friend , later his business partner , I have already mentioned for the sterling work done on the pumps . They were uncomplaining and efficient , becoming friendly acquaintances.

Ray too had a helper in a brother , who , I heard , had an alcohol problem . However , when he came out to put in a small cut off storage area in the shed , he did a great job on that .

The English born employee of a camping and outdoors retail shop in town also did a fine job in making the roll up canvas blinds that protected the western side of the house from the sometimes very intense heat of the evening sun . One of them was of a difficult shape , but he worked out the problem neatly . They were so exactly made that I had no trouble in rigging them myself .

A different set of metal roller security shutters were also needed for that side of the house , as the whole wall consisted of two huge glass windows and a glass door , and so we needed them for the times we were not in residence . The firm that installed those also had a good set of tradesmen , and we never had trouble with the rollers . The same firm installed the inside vertical blinds with no trouble , but I did panic one day when a visiting child pulled on the verticals that separated out the area that the visitors used as a bedroom . It had been fastened into the ceiling at the correct distances between the expanding screws , but into the gyprock ceiling rather than into the metal rafters and could not sustain the weight of a small Tarzan .

However, the firm was a good one that came immediately to fix it , and in a way it was a rough justice that the original fitter had to clamber up through the man hole into the hot roof area to get the right spacing to set in the screws .

He , like the plumber , was stout , but he also had a beard . When he finally came down , his beard was dripping sweat and I think he may have lost a few pounds weight .

He was a gun collector , and asked if I wanted to sell the 1912 Bayard .22 rifle that I had inherited from my father . It was an elegant piece of weaponry , but with a strange breech loading that cost it power . I had little use for it , so he probably got a collector's bargain at the price I charged him .

The ceiling was the source of a near miss for another tradesman . We had bought ourselves a slow combustion heater , because winter nights could be cold in Dondingalong , and there was after all a large amount of wood available on the well treed block . The fitter putting the stove in was up on a step ladder, drilling into the ceiling to fit the chimney . I had a couple of electrical fittings switched on , but suddenly they all stopped working . Somehow he had managed to drill straight between two parallel wires in the roof , and shorted everything . I still do not know how he escaped electrocution . It was all easily fixed however , after a moment of startlement on his part and indeed mine . I would not have cared to have to administer mouth to mouth resuscitation to him .

The other electrical tradesman I met up with when he was repairing my blender provided a curious coincidental life circumstance . His wife , working in the shop with him , noted my name , which is a very uncommon one. She asked me did I know a nurse lecturer of that name who had taught her at a Sydney hospital , and it turned out that it indeed was my wife . I am pleased to report that she spoke very fondly of Bet.

All in all , a pleasant , friendly group of country people , more than competent despite the odd hitch encountered .