This is a little story of something that happened to me when i first started out.


I got a call from a guy in London who had a leek problem coming in through his ceiling downstairs, he had managed to sort the leek out but now needed to remedy the problem that caused it so he thought he would get a tiler in to re-tile the shower area.....


This was my third job so you could say i was slightly inexperienced and not to mention nervous at getting it right. Because he'd had a leek it was very easy for me to insist upon tanking, i also insisted that all the old tiles needed to be removed so i could sort the walls out properly.


Anyway..... as i'm walking around this guy's flat i notice that in every photo he is with the same man, and in one of the photo's they are kissing eaceh other at what looks like to have been a wedding!!


This guy was completely straight acting so i had no idea he was gay at this point and not wanting to ask just in-case he thought i was making a move on him i just shuffled off back to the shower area.....


I had taken most of the tiles off the wall which were landing on top of my dust sheet when there was a knock at the door, i heard the customer skip off to answer it. I wasn't paying much attention until the really annoying punch-you-in-the-mouth kind of annoying exchange of "hiiiyaaaaaas" and "how are youuuuus" in 2 deep voices just does not sound good.


Now my customer was not especially big (no, not in that department) he was about 5ft 8 and probably weighed about 9 stone with no muscle at all. Yes i had fully checked him out!!!

I continued working and a few minutes latter could hear footsteps coming up the stairs so as you do i pretended that the work was actually harder than it was by making small little grunts every so often in the hope that it might mean a bigger tip at the end of the job (not that kind of tip)


They were talking the whole way up the stairs until they got just outside the shower room when my customer said "Toby this is Tim and he just wanted to have a quck look" I recognised him instantly from the photo's.......... i already felt stupid cos i was on my hands and knees with my bum in the air cleaning the bits of tile off the floor with 2 gay guys standing behind me


I stopped what i was doing and turned round to say "Hiyaaaaaaaaa" only to be confronted by one of the biggest men i have ever seen (even bigger than Dan) now me being on my knees left me in a very awkward position because as you know if you try to stand up from your knees you have to lean forward slightly first, HOWEVER this shower room was very small and this man very big and we were kind of crammed in, so if i had leaned forward it may have looked like i was about to greet him with a different kind of handshake!!


So i thought the best option was to stay on my knees which was not much better cos you can imagine what the level of my head height was in line with!!! crooking my neck to look up at this giant was making me feel very small and pathetic, but what could i do?? after all he was my customer and just politely telling me all about how much the shower has been a pain in their arses... (pun intended) and how much they were looking forward to getting it back....... Far too much information for me at that point.


He eventually came to the end of his groans and said goodbye and turned around to leave, leaving his much smaller and very white looking partner (think Tom Hanks in Philadelphia) behind for a second...... he asked if i wanted anything, now i don't know if this would happen to any straight man caught in this type of situation or maybe weather it's just me holding the bat in the wrong hand so-to-speak lol, but every single thing that came out of their mouths i seemed to somehow get an image of what they really meant in my head!!


For example "you must be really HOT UP HERE would you like a tea" would leave an image of him bending over the bath edge and slowley purring the words "HOT UP HERE" while winking at me or something... so everytime something was said i would feel a little bit strange!!


After politely refusing the offer of some of his hot liquid he left and went back downstairs to George Foreman's brother!! who was now saying something about "fancy watching some Itty Bitty" which i latter discovered that this meant Little Britton!!!!! but that's another story altogether!!


i was left on my knees trying to regain my focus and get my breath back before eventually getting back to tidy up.


Now you have to remember that i was new to this trade and what would now take me about 4 days actually ended up taking me nearly 4 weeks, so after 4 weeks of very uncomfortable verbal penetration i was beginning to doubt myself and my abilities to still see the beauty in the fairer sex that has so often led me to behave like a complete arse in the foolish hope that they would take me home and abuse me............ i was exhausted because there is only so much one person can take (litterally)



Many many many days and frightening images in my head latter and i was ready for the final clean up, so i packed everything away and started to clean everything up from top to BOTTOM, oh god i was so excited to be leaving especially as i had developed a rash that resembled a crispy piece of bacon across my face because UN-be-known to me they were making me cups of tea with soya milk in it which i have an allergic reaction too


There i am cleaning away the bottom of the shower tray a million miles away when i noticed a load of broken tiles that had somehow got through my dust sheet, without thinking and without any thought to my mental health i shoved two of my fingers deep into the plughole to remove all the debris, In and out my fingers were going removing all kinds of grimey crap. Still in a world of my own i dug deeper and deeper to make sure all loose bits had been retrieved, now with my fingers shoved deep into this dark hole i heard Tim call out to his boyfriend (completely for innocent reasons) "where have you put the Vaseline"


Every part of my body stopped for a moment and complete silence engulfed me as a wave of nausea hit me like Gary Glitters Rytham Stick......


my world had just crumbled around me, there was i on my knees in these guys shower tray with my fingers in there wet, slimy plughole suddenly remembering the conversation about how much they have missed using the shower and can't wait to get it back running through my head over and over again.

I just froze looking at my poor fingers as i imagined exactly in disturbingly graphic detail just what weird and wonderful things must have drained away through the very plughole that was now suckling on the end of my fingers... the fingers of my right hand, The one i hold my food with, the one my girlfriend likes the most and the one that is doing the bulk of letter pushing on this post!!!


One very big Frank Bruno and one very small Will Young crammed together in this small shower enclosure enjoying all the fruits of their relationship and then blissfully cleaning themselves and each other afterwards.............The hair that had been tangled up that i was so generosly removing with each finger plung into that hole that had also acted as a landing nett for vast amounts of man jam, blood & poo mixed, saliva, snot and all sorts of other stuff that could have come out of any one of the pleasant holes on the human body!!! This was not good!!

Eventually i pulled myself together, retrieved my fingers from the plughole and plunged them into anything that could offer some restoration to normal activities like the 3 quarters of a bottle of bleach that i used to scrub them over and over and over again until they were just that sore i could do know more. I did not use my hand to eat with for about the next fortnight.

I'm sorry if anyone finds this post offensive but if you do just imagine how i felt in that plughole

Happy showering

TJ

This post has been edited by TJ Smiler: Jun 21 2009, 03:54 PM

you know TJ, I am on the rota today for tiler world and was thinking 'what a bad day to be rotaed on fathers day', but just reading that has made my day on here mate,

quality!!!!

Question is though, did they recomend you to any of there friends - STUD

Welsh were they?

TJ, two bits of advice.

1)Tape over the shower waste before you do anything.

2)If you are aware that two buggers are coming upstairs to your work space then stand up.

Welsh?? It's a possibility i suppose lol

Errrm luckily they did not pass my details on

Sussex, your advice although cracked me up is something that to this day i have questioned myself on lol


tj

This post has been edited by TJ Smiler: Jun 21 2009, 03:42 PM

Ducting tape is great stuff, completely seals any hole and wll take a hell of a lot to penetrate. Just don't get it wet before you apply it

Thats defo a Wivers School of tiling coming out there

Thats why me and the Wivs are top chums C J.............We have the same humor, and it's very much out of the TJ school of tiling... thats why we are top mates. Just testing the water at the mo so tamed it slightly, he was trying to get me to do it on the other one like i USED to when it first started!! but i was off the sceene for too long so thought i would leave it to him otherwise people think your copying!!...... plus it's much better on here anyway..... i'm learning more, nobody better to answer your questions than the BAL technicians


Tj

This post has been edited by TJ Smiler: Jun 22 2009, 07:48 AM

You told me the sort of things that you and Wivers do on jobs. You wouldn't want to have tried any of that there.

Very true mate.... Is very very funny when we work together....... Shame i don't get to work with him as much but his cousin works with him full time now and with the credit crunch there aint enough for three, (Wivs has done well to keep them both quiet busy) his cousin's a good lad though and is just as bad himself lol so hopefully the three of us get chance to be on the same job together when it all picks up ........now that would be interesting


TJ