I once had a roofer who was eventually forced to give up the game because he got so fat that he fell right through two roofs. (Fortunately, neither of them was mine.) But things could have been worse. We had another roofer whose young apprentice had invented another game to pass the time. We caught him standing on the apex of our roof, with one foot on each side of the ridge, and then he'd suddenly jump into the air and spin 180 degrees so that he landed facing the other way. (Try and imagine that. And then imagine that the roofline was nearly fifty feet up in the air. It was! Never mind the damage risk to our roof, it was a helluva good way for him to break his neck, or indeed his back.)
And then there was the specially-accredited gas Rayburn fitter who didn't think that a fifty foot stone flue required putting any heat insulation around the stainless flue liner. So when our £8,000 Rayburn started pouring gallons of condensation water down into the oven, where it rusted up the whole works within a couple of weeks from new, he baldly told us, "they all do that, sir". No, they bloody don't. We had to get Rayburn in to force him to do the job again. But how do these idiots ever survive?
Your own recollections?
BJ
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