Free toilet

July 22nd, 2005

It’s great having a back garden full of long grass. I don’t know why short grass is so popular. People just don’t seem to stop and think things like “Hey, why am I actually cutting this stuff?”. If they did, they’d be happier, and have much more free time to spend with their families, albeit probably not in the garden.

The best bit is that once you’ve learned to love long grass in your garden, it will annoy people who come to visit. And that’s how we ended up with my father-in-law coming round a couple of days ago to spend four hours cutting the back garden down so that the fence was higher than the lawn once more. Hurray!

While he was getting ready to leave though, a nice man came round from the council and said that he wanted to upgrade our bathroom with a new bath, toilet and sink for free. It was explained to him that the house owner wasn’t in, and that it was bought anyway and not a council house. The nice man insisted that it didn’t matter - all the houses on the street were getting it due to the newly allocated council budget for home bathroom upgrades.

He then took a few photos of my bathroom and left, promising to come back next Tuesay at 8am with a new bathroom and some workmen.

This seemed a little odd, so the missus decided to ask the neighbours about it, being the jaded cynic that she is. Next door claimed not to have been offered a bathroom, but had read about ‘bogus workmen’ in the local paper. I’m not sure what a bogus workman is, or what they had done to get themselves in the paper but it seemed to make things even more suspicious.

A quick phone call to the council yielded the pleasantly philosphical response, “You don’t get anything for free in this world.”

I took this to mean that as far as they’re concerned we ain’t getting a bathroom.

This leaves some unanswered questions.

Who is this man? Why did he take photographs of my toilet? Will he be coming back on Tuesday at 8am? Will he actually want to fit a bathroom, and if so will he end up trying to charge me?

I don’t think I’ll be letting him in anyway.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized