Piece of cake

One of the first things Mike and I bought after taking possession of this house back in the nineties was an 18-foot ladder, the main purpose of which was to allow me to get on the roof to clear off the fir needles and cones and moss, before cleaning out the gutters. (Why me? Don’t get me wrong. Mike did a lot of things around the house, not just chopping and hauling wood, but he was bad with heights, so this job was mine.) The ladder was a good length. Fully extended, I could place it at a safe angle at the back of the house and climb up with enough room at the top to allow me to step easily from the ladder on to the roof.

When I came back in 2008 after spending some time in the UK, the ladder had disappeared. It just lived on its side beside the house. Perhaps some bastard had stolen it. (We’d already had an axe disappear from the shed.) Or perhaps the lowlife Mike had asked to housesit while he was in hospital recovering from surgery had sold it to buy drugs. (In fairness to Mike, he did not know at the time that the guy was a lowlife.) Whatever the case, the ladder was gone and needed to be replaced. A bloke Mike knew, who had a truck, offered to pick up a replacement in town. This would have been great, except the bloke came back (when I wasn’t here) with a 16-foot ladder, not an 18-foot one. And that was an important two feet.

I could no longer place the ladder at a safe angle and have room to spare at the top. If I wanted to get up on the roof, which I need to do once a year, I now had to place the ladder at what I knew to be an unsafe angle with barley two feet at the top. Getting off the ladder and onto the roof now involved taking a deep breath and hoping I could make it safely. 

Cleaning the roof and gutters is a job that I used to take at least a couple of days doing. Go up, clear needles and cones and moss on one side, come down, have a cup of tea, go back, clear the other side, come down, leave it until the next day, go back, clean gutters, take a break, go back to clean the skylights. No more. Getting from the ladder on to the roof was now so nerve wracking I tried to get it all done in one go. A long and tiring day with, at most, one break to pee or have something to eat. Last year I realised when I’d finished the gutters that I’d failed to put paper towels in the bag with the window cleaner. No way. I just couldn’t face the risk involved in going up and down that ladder again, so the skylights did not get cleaned.

Surely, you ask, this is a job you could pay someone else to do? Well, in theory, yes, but the fact of the matter is I live on a fixed income and there is no spare cash to pay someone to do this job. If I knew how to clean the chimney, I’d do that, too, but I don’t, so that is one job I pay for every year.

Anyway…

Some weeks ago I was round at Rhodo Dave’s to pick up some rhodo food. Whilst there I notice his ladder. A 20-foot ladder. Be still my beating heart. A 20-foot ladder could be positioned at a safe angle and leave plenty of room at the top for me to be able to just step on to the roof. Could I, I asked, possibly borrow his ladder some time? Yes, he said. Hurrah!

He brought it over a couple of days ago and yesterday I made a start.

Look at this!

Safe as anything. Well, a helluva lot safer than what I’ve been doing for the past 13 years.

And here we have it, folks. 

Halfway there (no, not the play) three hours later.

It probably didn’t need to take three hours. I probably don’t need to be quite so thorough with the moss removal. But I am thorough because moss can mess with the roof tiles and if I had to replace the roof I would be totally fucked financially. 

And the great thing is not feeling as if I have to keep going for another four and a half hours. I can just safely climb down and safely climb back up today. Wowza!

Yes, there will come a time when I really, really cannot get up on the roof. I know that. And when that time comes I will have to cross my fingers and hope the roof lasts longer than I do. For now, assuming I can borrow Rhodo Dave’s ladder every year, piece of cake.