High

Usually I'm fine working on scaffolds. But today, I have decided to finish and climb back down the ladder and put the kettle on. I don't know if it's because Cathy and the kids have been unable to come, but high up on the scaffold, repairing the broken roof tiles that are on the over hang that shoots rain water away from the wall, it felt kind of lonely. Maybe being so high, without the sight or sound of anybody except the gentle breeze that swirled around my head as it came over the roof from the west, it made me feel removed from the normal flow of things. I suppose the fact that the scaffold had to be erected over a metre away from the wall because of the over hang made it worse. Although I had tied it off around the bars of the renaissance window half way up, it was rather wobbly and added to my sense of unease. Coming down the ladder though, I had to smile to myself. Triggered by the wobbling and the sound of Jean Pierre's cockerel crowing, as he does sporadicaly day and night, I thought of a similar scene years before when with Danny I was rendering a chimney on a cottage down a little country lane. It had been raining on and off all morning, but after lunch it brightened up, so scaling back up the ladder and taking the bucket of lime plaster off the pully that Danny had sent up, I started to second coat the chimney. At first it was very subtle, an almost imperceptable move away from the wall. But just as I was thinking it was more of a stretch for me to reach the top corner than I'd remembered from yesterday, I instinctively  dropped my trowel into the bucket, and with a good chunk of my heart in my mouth, grabbed the corner of the chimney stack and wrapped my legs around the safety barrier of the scaffold. Danny, thinking I had gone mad as it looked like I had joined a hug a chimney society, started to yell up some admittedly funny obsceneties that are a feature of chaps in his line of work. But soon after deciphering help from my straining grunts, he realised that the back legs of the scaffold were sinking in the newly dampened earth. With an admirable quickness of mind he shouted up that if I could hold on for a couple of minutes, he had noticed that the woman of the house had an old wooden ladder in the chicken run and he could use it as a wedge to stop any further movement whilst I climbed down. Relieved he'd got a plan I hung on for dear life until I heard the noise of chickens almost barking their anger followed by a familiar stream of Danny's invectives. Sensing that the slipping scaffold had stopped, I strained my head to see Danny, the crotch of his jeans snagged on the wire fence as he tried to straddle it, swinging at an irrate cockerel with a long cumberson old Ladder. The more he swung, the more snagged he became and the cockerel, easily evading his clumsy defence, moved in to attack the leg remaining in his territory with claws and beak. Dropping the Ladder it broke, its years sitting unused in the run, contributing to its rotting demise. It seemed an eternity scaling down the poles nearest the gable end of the cottage, expecting to have to jump at any time, but I made it, the scars of the day belonging to Danny, both on his leg and being bettered by a bird. Sipping my tea and listening to Jean Pierre's cockerel, I went and pulled at the scaffold pole in the same way I have done ever since that day, and gave a little stamp on the sun baked earth.

Rats

Not many people's favourite animal are rats, and so it seems to Tom. After slinking away unseen the other night, I have just found a small dead rat near to the step of the caravan. I presume it was he who left it and although it appears to have no marks on it I don't think it had a cardiac arrest as it was passing the caravan. I like to think that he brought it to me as  a gift for helping him out, and although not a particularly nice one for humans, I suppose his gift range is a little limited. I expect it was more likely though that he dropped it as he caught sight of me as he was making good his escape. He will probably return for it when it gets dark.  Rats hold a singular place in my affections. When I was but a young chap with only the acquisition of girlfriends, money and a decent left foot on the pitch to stretch my mind, I was working on the construction of a new brewery maltings. Like most young  men, I probably had an over inflated opinion of my own abilities and one day after saying that I could work quite easily on my own, I found myself in a labyrinth of concrete lined dark tunnels with flickering lights every ten meters or so which felt like I was on one of those scary video games. Near every light there was a steel joist that held up the concrete slabbed roof.

"Just wrap the stainless steel mesh around each one, tie angle beads on the edges and render them with three coats," said my dad with a smile that knew my ego would not let me utter any grievance about being given this god forsaken job. He knew as well as I, that it meant carrying trestles and planks, as well as barrowing the sand and cement and wire etc, underground along long, cold corridors, with my footsteps the only sound to accompany me. After a couple of days with no daylight, I was beginning to feel like Jack Nicholson stalking those corridors in The Shining, when pushing the wheelbarrow along to where my trestles were set up, I heard a funny kind of rustling, scratching noise that seemed to be getting closer. Picking up my speed a little that had lapsed into a plod, I gripped the handles tighter and broke into a trot, which isn't easy when your barrow is full to the hilt. With the noise getting closer and more sinister I stopped and turned and shouted out that whoever was there to stop mucking about, or words to that effect. But in the dimness I still couldn't see anything until in the glow of the last light behind me I saw a mass of rats running my way with god knows what aim in mind. Leaving the barrow where it was, I took off, reaching my top speed in a time that I had rarely achieved on the football pitch, but even so was surprised when I approached the trestles and leapt onto the planks before the rats reached me. Feeling like a builder's version of Indiana Jones, and I do believe he was a carpenter once, I looked back to see fat rats, bloated on Barley, run under the trestles and off into the darkness with barely a squeak in my direction. Where they were going and in such a hurry  I never found out. In the three months it took me to do what seemed like endless beams, the rats came again on three more occasions, but by then I was almost used to it.  It's getting dark now and I am beginning to wish I had moved the rat further away, but if it is there in the morning I suppose it means that it was meant for me.

Martyn Walker is the author of Stopcock, available on Amazon

Dragonflies

I don't know what it is about rivers that make me feel a little thoughtful. If anyone tells me its because they are reflective I will throw something at them. No, maybe it's the way the water flows non stop like life itself, supporting a whole host of life forms as it makes its way to the sea. Sitting this afternoon on a small pebble beach after giving up trying to work in this heat, I was taken by the dragonflies in huge groups flitting over the surface of the water, landing on the smallest scraps of plant life, their only thoughts I suppose, procreation and food. A bit like Danny. After walking some way upstream in the shallows, I then hopped on to one of the large rubber rings I bought for the kids. With my hands and feet trailing in the cool water and my bum stuck in the middle so the water crept up to my chest, I floated silently back round the bend in the river towards where I left my towel and bag. A couple of vibrant blue dragonflies landed on my knee and through half closed eyes watched as other birds and fish came close, my motionless sprawl giving them confidence. Its funny when at times like these, with no other person in sight or sound, the trickling of the water the only background to the screeing call of the buzzards, where your mind takes you. Transported maybe thirty years, I thought of the rushing dark waters of the river Trent, and my brother and I, leaning against an old wall that divided the garden of a manor house we were working on in Nottinghamshire from the small lane that led to it. We were lime rendering the old outside walls, and as we finished an elevation in a day so as to have no joints, it meant a long day and it was about seven o'clock and we needed a break before the last push. The wall was only chest high, so we sat, chewing the fat about what we were going to do with our lives and sipping form a coke bottle whilst flicking stones into the river, when we heard the noise of a lorry roaring closer before pulling up nearby. Surprised that a lorry would even drive down this small lane off the beaten track, we decided that we didn't want our break interrupted by a lost driver asking for directions, so kept our heads down, certain he would ask at the manor. Both of us jumped though when a loud clattering sound followed by excitable voices and the crunching of boots on gravel made us more than curious. when the voices came so close that they were on the other side of the wall where we sat, I thought it time to take a peek. Standing up; I came face to face with a grinning miner, who with many of his colleagues was peeing up the wall. "Alright mate," he smiled before zipping up and turning towards the lorry. I stammered something which seemed to make many of the miners laugh as they made there way back, some with pick axe handles in their hands. These were the days of the miners strike, and I mused later on this group of men, who looked for all intents and purposes that they were on a jolly day out somewhere, mates together, instead of being embroiled in industrial strife.
Walking back home down the track, over shadowed with maize growing each side I noticed that the rubber ring started to deflate. Should I repair or replace it? Oh well, I have a few days to decide before the kids get here.

Martyn Walker is the author of Stopcock, available globally on Amazon