well, it’s better not to go into details.” Add to that the amount of depot-bound trains that rumble through each day just yards from his delicate hanging baskets, a budget of less than pounds 150 (a third of it coming from his own pocket) and, this year, several last minute disasters, and Arthur’s preparation for the final judging of the 1997 London Underground Station Gardens Competition, hasn’t been ideal.
“A tree fell through my greenhouse at home so I couldn’t grow any seeds,” says 62-year-old Arthur, who has been at Morden for five years. “The wall on Platform Five gets terribly abused,” says Arthur, a station assistant, “the contractors dump their rubbish there, and what the late- night revellers do … Several thousand members of the public troop through his garden at London’s Morden underground station each week, using his tubs as rubbish bins, his trees as urinals, and even occasionally stopping to uproot some marigolds and pinch a cutting or two on the way. And also because, when I thought about it, I remembered he was one of the 98 per cent and I was one of the 2 per cent. Sometimes, we minorities have to stick together.JEFF HOWELL IS A BRICKLAYER.
If you think you’ve got problems with greenfly and acidic soil, spare a thought for Arthur Louth Arthur has far more to contend with than most gardeners. Well, if you must know, it’s because of his constantly barking dog, and his recent really loud birthday party that went on till 4am. You’re thinking, why don’t I just nip round and tell the man what to do with his ball valve, and stop all that water being wasted, and save him being fleeced by the emergency plumber. Instead, he stands there sweeping.Now, I know what you’re thinking. This is a task that the man should be able to do himself in 20 minutes, if only someone had told him how.
They will charge him pounds 80 for turning up, pounds 35 for turning the water off at the stop valve under the kitchen sink, and pounds 68.73 for replacing the fibre washer on the ball valve in the cistern Plus VAT. Leaks in customers’ internal plumbing systems remain their own responsibility.So the man is probably waiting for AAA Excellent Plumbing Services out of the Yellow Pages to come and save him. After all, following the recent Drought Summit with that nice Mr Prescott, the water companies agreed to fix everybody’s leaks, didn’t they? Unfortunately not; the water companies only undertook to mend leaking service pipes, from the company stop valve under the pavement to the rising main inside the property. So he stands there, in his suit, sweeping, pausing only to look up at the source of the nuisance.
I imagine he must have called for help, and he may even have tried the water company. It is a lovely sunny evening, but the water continues to pour down on him. It is coming from the warning pipe, or overflow, from the cistern in his loft. The flat roof is obviously too flat because the water is ponding instead of running away into the hopper and downpipe; it is probably seeping back into the brickwork of the main house and appearing as a damp patch inside. They would also be able to deal with minor emergencies without getting ripped off.
As I write this, I am looking out across the back gardens at a man sweeping a flood of water off the flat roof of his rear addition.
They would still employ them to do their building work, but they would be more able to tell a good job from a bad one, and would not be so easily duped into having inappropriate or unnecessary work carried out. If they had, then 98 per cent of the population would not be in thrall to the other 2 per cent who have chanced to find out about these things. Let’s face it, the teachers at your school never came in and said, today, children, we are going to look at roofing Or plumbing Or how to choose the right plaster. So how come you defer to them, and assume they are possessed of secret skills and knowledge that you yourself could not hope to attain?
The problem clearly lies with inadequate education – yours, not theirs. In some cases a bit too ordinary – tattoos, fags, beer bellies hanging out of their trousers, racist and misogynist attitudes by the shovelful Some of these guys have problems reading the Sun. I mean, be fair, when you get some “builders” round to work on your home, they’re not usually your actual white-coated scientist types are they? They’re not often what you’d describe as intellectuals.They’re just ordinary blokes. Buildings are such simple things to construct and maintain – it’s amazing that people find them so bewildering.