Regular readers will know about our swimming pool. In the 12 June posting I wrote about what a state it was in after being left uncared for over a year, whilst we were back in the UK. We had virtually emptied it and cleaned it before the torrential rains came and filled up the deep end again, rather depressingly. We also noticed that the lining had come away from the pool sides in several places and hadn’t returned with the weight of rain water on it. For over two weeks we’ve been trying to get in touch with Andrea , who installed the pool for the previous owners, and yesterday he turned up.
Now I wrote about Andrea, in one of my earliest postings on 7 May 2007, and the effect he seemed to have on the women in this household. Let’s just say he is a handsome man, perhaps too good-looking for his own good as my nan used to say about my mate John McCann. Mind you that was before JM lost all his hair and ended uplooking like Arthur off On the Buses. I digress. Andrea turned up whilst we were knee-deep in builders running round in bobcats and scooping up all the earth they’d excavated out whilst underpinning the foundations of our house. He turned up in his macho pick-up, stepped from the vehicle looking even more tanned and healthy (let’s face it he’s outdoors all day) and I’ve never seen C move so quickly to go and greet someone at the door.
I was hunting around for some shoes but I looked through the window and they were already off skipping gaily down to the slope to the pool. I thought I’d leave them to it…. They returned 5-10 minutes later, Andrea drove off and C sauntered in smiling serenely and a wistful dreamy little look on her face. I was dreading the news to be honest, we knew there was no guarantee on the pool as Andrea told us previously that he’d withheld it when the previous owners refused to fully settle their bill or something. So would it mean a new lining, will it cost a fortune, what’s the bad news C? All C said rather breathlessly in the general direction of her cousin P was ‘Aw he’s such a good-looking guy. So tanned. So fit, just so gooood-looking’. She sort of drawled the last bit out, rather dirtily I thought. Honestly, that’s just treating we men like lumps of meat. What about our brains, what about our personalities, what about the frigging pool C? What did he say?
C just said that it’s probably OK. He’ll send some guys around the middle of next week and they’ll suck the air out and the lining should go back alright. All I had to do was empty the pool again (for the 4th time) and finish cleaning the lining. Ah well – it was better news than I had envisaged. C was twirling her hair and wandering round with a happy carefree sort of look. All day long I had to endure girly-talk about Andrea. I even made the mistake of heading back from the supermarket via his premises, which triggered more cooing.
Well at least we might get our pool back in action, which will be great. We’ve got the grandkids coming out in a week or so’s time and it’ll be brilliant to have it ready for them. Though I’ll have to put up with another ‘oh Andrea’ day next Wednesday. The things we men have to endure eh!
pp
Pasta Paulie 