I woke early and did some mini houseworky things to make my flat more presentable. I even changed the bedding and hoovered the bedroom carpet. I’m not sure what I was expecting from someone who was just coming out to assess my flat for wall insulation but it seemed a bit over the top and maybe a tad weird.
He arrived at the flat below mine to visit the elderly couple living there before popping up to see me and I initially busied myself by pretending to type up a column, whilst simultaneously searching Amazon for ice cube trays.
All this was fine until he arrived in the front room where I was sat and I asked him if there was anything about the property he needed to know?
He asked if it had any damp problems?
I said there were none and he thought this was a cue to tell me about a property he had visited where the occupant was a hoarder. At which point, I immediately gulped, knowing that my spare room resembles a warehouse that Amazon would be proud to have in their portfolio and he’d be in there pretty soon to inspect it.
He said the hoarder had a small child – thankfully, not in a cupboard, cardboard box or closed wooden drawer – and lived in a really mouldy house and he felt duty bound to report it to the appropriate authorities for them to take action.
I momentarily wondered if he’d report me to the authorities for having mouldy old people living under my stairs?
Anywayze… So far, so normal.
He then began to measure the rooms with his electronic infra-red measuring thing – to give it its proper name.
I felt like I was in a game of Laser Quest. There were infra-red beams bouncing off all the walls that I had to contort to avoid, step over or crawl under.
And so, having mentioned the subject of the mouldy child, he started to talk about his daughter and this is where things got a little disturbing…
He said that when she was 4, she told him that she wanted to kill people!
He said that he didn’t know where she got those thoughts from but I’m guessing it wasn’t from watching Rosie and Jim, unless I missed that episode?
He then added that she’s now 9 and she told him that she wants to work in the Natural History Museum because she likes to look at dead bodies, bones and embalmed animals.
I should have opened my freezer. He could have taken photographs for her to study. Goodness knows he took enough photos of my radiators.
I had a friend a college who became a taxidermist. True. It only now makes sense as to why he was always looking at me in a funny way and carrying a tape measure.
“And if she can’t work at the Natural History Museum,” he said, “she’d like to be an assassin.”
Let’s be honest, we’ve all harboured those thoughts when out shopping in Tesco’s but maybe not at such a young age?
And he told her that assassins get good pay – maybe wall insulation inspection is just his cover job? – and then told her that they normally get employed by bad people.
Maybe because good people don’t really think about killing others? I had to admire his logic.
I suggested that maybe he should revisit the museum idea with her again and put assassinations on the backburner for now otherwise it would be a very interesting conversation at the job centre when she wants to sign up for Universal Credit.
“I’m quite interested in assassination… or maybe human taxidermy?”
I also wondered if he should refer his daughter to Prevent?
Before leaving, he told me he’d get someone to fix my kitchen extractor fan and someone to do a boiler check because “they aren’t in my skill set. I’m strictly a guy who measures things and takes photographs.”
He’s not someone you’d want in your Direct Messages.
He said that there would be someone to do some kind of beaded wall insulation. To be honest, he did explain it to me in laborious scientific detail how it all works but I wasn’t remotely interested but he assured me it was a good thing and it would take 3 hours and the work would take place outside, so I wouldn’t really notice.
My kind of home improvement. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, his daughter might assassinate someone and he hides their body in the cavity of my wall, I suppose…?
Categories:Animals, Home, School, Television
Russ Writes 
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