LeftLion print ed. 7 - Interview with the vampire
Regular readers to this blog will recognise the vast majority of this column from my first blog entry on my Gothic Plumber. Sorry about that, but I didn't have much time for a new one as they axed my Tales of Robin Hood column about a week before it was to go to print so I had to think (write?) fast. The interview will be brand new to you, hopefully that will sate your CINB jones.
As usual, the LeftLion editor edited it as he saw fit (the nerve!). Usually I agree with his edits (with a couple of exceptions), but he chopped out the paragraph where I talk about "Not having the interest to talk to someone who has been elbows deep in ass muck..." I can't believe he took that one out, that's the funniest bit of the whole thing! Now the note to self comment at the bottom doesn't make sense. oh well. I have obviously left the paragraph in for CINB readers.
By the way, I just got laid off from the day job on Friday so if you know of anyone looking to employ a Web/Flash Developer or better yet, a writer, let a brother know robcutforth[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
On the bright side, I may be able to do a column on working as an NSPCC chugger or Big Issue shlepper, Happy days!
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I have discussed at length how crazy the people are in this country. You people watch birds and trains for no reason, say things like "whereby" and burn stuff in celebration of a guy who torched parliament. You beat people up while your buddy films it on his cell phone and you’ll perform dental surgery on yourselves before you’ll go to a dentist. I thought the term "English Eccentric" was an oxymoron because, quite frankly, you’re all nuts.
That was until I met my Gothic Plumber, Tony Napleton. Yes, you heard me right. A couple of months ago, the valve on my hot water tank leaked onto the pump and shorted it out. Why the pump is located directly below a valve is beyond me, but I’ve been in England for over two years now, the days of my questioning "why" when it comes to building practices are well and truly over. The answer is always "It’s England, they’re nuts". I am well past Denial, Bargaining and Depression and have arrived safely into Acceptance. Why did the builders bury human turds in my front lawn? It’s England, they’re nuts. Why did the former owner of my house take out the shower? It’s England. Why is the guy walking up my driveway to fix my hot water tank wearing a black shirt, black Wranglers, have dyed-black hair, five black earrings in one ear and a hole I can see through in the other? It’s Eng... no wait, this is something else.
I open my door to let Tony in to see that he’s (I’m guessing) in his mid forties. Do Goths come in mid-forties variety, I think to myself. "Are you Rob?" he asks me. "Uh, yeah, are you the Antichrist?"
He wasn’t. He was, in fact, my new plumber.
If there is one thing I know about Goths it's that they don’t say much, at least not to other non-Goths like myself. Which is great. There is nothing I hate more than a chatty builder. I’m not paying you for the yak yak, fella, fix the ruddy whatever-it-is-called-thingie-that-isn’t-working and get the eff out. It’s difficult enough to make conversation with people I like, I sure as hell don’t have the energy or the interest to do it with some dude who is elbows deep in other people’s ass muck for 12 hours a day.
Tony went up to the tank, identified the problem right away, grabbed the parts out of his rental truck, as his hearse was in the shop (no, really) and fixed it. He didn’t even have time to finish his tea (For the record, The walking undead take their tea with milk and one sugar).
After he was done, we asked him who to make the cheque out to. "Gothic Plumbing", he says... well, obviously. We hand over the cheque and he hands us his business card. "Gothic Plumbing", sure enough, complete with bat and gargoyle.
Tony leaves and my wife and I look at each other, look at his business card and look at each other again. "Did that just happen?" I ask her. She assures me it did and I make it my mission to find out more about my Gothic Plumber.
I call him up and ask if he’d like to be interviewed for the paper and surprisingly, he does. Turns out there’s a lot more to my Gothic friend than meets the eye.
It’s the immortal question: Which came first, the Goth or the Plumber?
I was Goth before I knew what Goth was. I liked wearing black and people would come up to me and say "Are you a Goth?" and I would say, "Oh, what’s that?" It started in the 80s and I just happened to like the music and the style. It’s so easy in the morning when choosing something to wear when everything is black. It’s become popular with the kids now, which I don’t like because it’s put the prices on the shoes up.
Being a Goth must’ve made your work life interesting.
When I started working for a company and given the obligatory blue overalls, I decided to set up my own business. What should I call it? Gothic Plumbing. It’s partly marketing to be honest. If you go to the yellow pages, it’s different from anything else in there. Yes, it puts people off, but it generates a certain amount of interest and some people are into alternative lifestyles themselves. I tend to get the same amount of enquiries from small businesses as people. It works quite well. I don’t go to jobs wearing the makeup and nail varnish, that doesn’t go over very well. Chipped nail varnish doesn’t look very good anyway.
What the strangest reaction you’ve gotten on a job?
I got a call out for a little old lady one time. When I got to the door, she said, "Oh, me duck, you’ve got the wrong house, you want the one next door". I said, "No, I’m the plumber." That gave her a bit of a fright. You get strange reactions from children asking if your earrings are real, you also get people asking me to turn up in all the Goth gear. I tend to steer clear of those ones. You also get the odd idiot calling up asking "Is that chav plumbing?"
I hear you ordinarily drive a hearse. What happened to it?
The brakes failed a mile and a half away from my house on the A453. The best way to put it, would be to say I brought it to a controlled crash into my dustbins. And that’s after it passed its MOT with flying colours. The A453 is a very busy road, I was very lucky it was 7 in the evening as there were suitable gaps in the traffic. I was also lucky I was in a hearse, as people tend to give a hearse a little more room on the road.
Driving a hearse must have its benefits, You must get free parking...
Yeah, you do to a certain degree, unless you get an over-efficient traffic warden. If you’ve got a coffin in the back, that helps. You do get some strange looks though when you’ve got a bath in there.
You’re obviously not from Nottingham, what brought you here from London?
When I came back from a three-year stint in Cyprus with The Royal Air Force, I was sent back to a base in Lincolnshire.
Oh right... What? Really?
Yes. I used to take aerial photographs in the service. I processed survey photographs for the government, photos of boats that weren’t supposed to be there, fishing where they weren’t supposed to and drug smugglers. I helped document the Turkish invasion in Cyprus. It was still the Cold War days at the tail end of the Vietnam war so we did some work with the Americans there as well.
I thought England had nothing to do with the war...
We didn’t. But the Americans had bases here and we processed a lot of photographs for them. Half the time you didn’t know what you were looking at, but they had some amazing equipment. They had a camera that swung like a pendulum, strapped beneath their planes. If they flew in a straight line over Britain, they could photograph the entire country in a single pass. In such detail that you could make out golf balls on the golf courses.
Holy crap. How long ago was that?
25 - 30 years ago.
God, you can only imagine what they’ve got now.
Quite.
Aw, right, did you catch that? As if being a Goth and a plumber wasn’t surreal enough, the guy took secret spy photos of the Turkish invasion in Cyprus and of the Vietnam War and just gave me first hand insight into American spy technology. He might just be the most interesting person I’ve ever met.
Note to self: Speak to builders more often.