As our business finally started to actually make money, the G.&D. Kirkham property repairing business got more and more jobs by referrals. As anyone in a service business knows, this is the best advertizing that you can have, when you start a job on the recommendation of someone else, you start off on the ‘front foot’ as a cricketer would say. One such job we had was in a house overlooking Scott Park. This house was owned by a doctor, and was huge to me, in fact to both of us. When you had lived all your life in a four roomed house, this job in a house with four huge rooms downstairs alone was big. We had to knock a doorway from the kitchen into the front room so that it was easier for Mrs Doctor to serve food during their frequent ‘dinner parties’. There was a doorway already, at the far end of the kitchen, but it meant that she had to walk an extra twenty feet, the impertinence of the original architect was beyond reproach!
Now Gordon was a great guy, every day I enjoyed working with him, but as I got more technical I realised that Gordon, even though an incredibly hard and honest worker, had an aversion towards spirit levels, accuracy and design standards. One day we installed a new sewer line in a backyard in Padiham, when the pipes were laid in place he sealed the joints with the brown clay that we had just dug up. When the homeowner asked what we were doing, Gordon said that the pipes were made of clay and once dried than this would be just as good. It was the first time of many when I heard the “it worked for a thousand years in ancient Egypt, why won’t it work here” speech. When I pointed out (when the homeowner left us alone, having no answer to this apparent logic), that the clay would shrink and the joint would leak when it dried out, Gordon thought for a second or two and then said that we should “bury the pipes quick before they do”. To my knowledge the pipes never leaked and for all I know are still working fine!
The incredibly well dressed and obviously educated doctor’s wife, met us and showed us the kitchen wall where the door had to be knocked through, then took us into the ‘lounge’, we had never actually been into a house where the owner called the front room a lounge, especially in what we called a posh (Southern) accent. Our homes had front rooms, this one had a ‘lounge’! When she left we looked at each other, and I said in a very poor London accent, “I say Gordon, shall we place the door here so that we can enter the lounge?” Gordon said in an equally bad accent, “I shall now retire and get the tools from the van, toodle pip old boy”
The wall was a regular single brick wall, and we had done dozens of these, you knock just enough bricks out across the top to install a lintel, this supports the wall above. Then take out the bricks below it to make a doorway, screw in the frame amd put some trim on the outside of the new frame. An easy job and usually a ‘one dayer’. Modern lintels are cement with reinforcing steel inside, we used wood, again in keeping with the ‘it worked for a hundred years why change’ philosophy. The modern listed building people would now be queuing up for our services! After a career in management dealing with legal issues of competency and procedure, I give thanks that we never realised that we were supposed to have building permits for work that alters the structure of a house. Our wooden lintels would never have passed a building inspection!
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| just like egypt! |
Gordon had many ‘quirky’ things that made life interesting working with him. He would measure a yard of rope by holding it in his hands and then touching his nose with the other end, I once questioned this only to find that it was as close to a yard as you could get. So when he stood back, held his hands up photographer style, with one thumb straight up, and the other at a ninety degree angle, proclaiming that the new doorway was square who would question it? Well, the doctor would that’s who. The man of the house came home for lunch. I found out that people with Southern accents have lunch at dinner time and dinner at tea time, very confusing to a young lad like me. He came home after a morning of doctoring and realising that the new doorway looked slightly out of plumb, and had got his spirit level out and checked the doorframe that was by now sitting in the new doorway.
Of course the frame was neither perfectly plumb, (straight up and down), or perfectly level. Gordon’s thumbs must have been a bit out that day, when you stood back it was obvious that something was not quite right, and when we went back after dinner the Doctor was there with his spirit level to show us the error of our ways. Gordon stood back, leant his head, pondered for a while, then his leant his whole body to one side, looked at the door and said “it might be a bit out, just at the top corner, we’ll put it right” the doctor showed us again with his spirit level, then asked Gordon to get his level so that we could double check, “spirit levels, I don’t use them” Gordon said proudly, “in ancient Egypt they used shadows and string, we don’t need them bloody things” if there was ever a wrong time or wrong person to say that to it was this customer. If straight and level were abstract things to Gordon, and I suppose, myself being the latter half of the G and D duo, it was anything but abstract to a man who had a career in accuracy, after all a patient isn’t treated using ancient medicines we were informed, “why not said Gordon, sometimes they work better”.
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| the deadly tool!! |
Gordon, was clearly a man before his time. Now that the world is once more embracing natural medicines, this would not seem such a strange statement now as it did then. After a quick course in spirit level technology by the doctor, he went off to work, and we went back to our work. The first task of which was to send me to buy a spirit level!
We got the doorframe adjusted, (it was barely out of square, Gordon did have it close) screwed it into place and filled in the gap between the frame and the wood before installing new trim around the outside.
The job turned out great, it looked perfect, nice and square, trimmed off nicely and we even applied a coat of primer, something that we never usually did. As we were leaving having done for the day I asked Gordon why he always talked about ancient Egypt, after all this was modern Burnley. Gordon was amazingly well read, something that most people may not realise about him. I got a quick lesson in Pythagoras, how to build a pyramid and erect a sphinx, all useful topics for a young Burnley lad. I laughed, and under my breath probably called him a couple of names beginning and ending with crazy. Now that I am over forty years older, and having made a career in engineering techniques and methodologies, I have to admit that today’s buildings will never survive four thousand years. Having said that, even the ancient Egyptians did actually have spirit levels, something that I never had the bravery to tell Gordon!
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