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Invoking a little-known law enacted in the year 636 by the Saxon warlord Bobby the Nit, Lord Jeremy Coldsore has drafted Professor Saltinus Facehead’s Egyptian diggers to put a new roof on Coldsore Hall. So begins Chapter CCCXLVI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney.
Constable Chumley explains the law to Prof. Facehead.
“In yon fillid wi’ King Bobby,” he says, “we fraith the bowyers aw’ mickle groith.” The professor nods sagely, although the constable’s quaint rural dialect eludes his best efforts to understand what has been said. He replies in archaic Portuguese. It is the constable’s turn to nod sagely.
Although the diggers speak no English, and their Arabic is not that hot, either, they throw themselves enthusiastically into their work and in a mere two days, Coldsore Hall has a new roof. The entire population of Scurveyshire assembles to admire it.
“It’s a miracle!” gushes Lady Margo Cargo. “I wish they’d do my roof like that!”
But when a moderate breeze springs up, the new roof seems to take wing and fly off toward the sunset. It will take some doing to get it back.
Here Ms. Crepuscular breaks in to report on the status of her Pulitzer Prize nomination, filed by her excitable neighbor, Mr. Pitfall.
“I am afraid Mr. Pitfall made an error and submitted the nomination to something called the Patzer Prize Committee,” she writes. “This group hands out prizes for poorly-played chess games. I cannot explain why they have decided to award a special prize to my epic romance, Oy, Rodney.”
The prize awarded is a rusty wheelbarrow. “I’ll have to find space for it on my mantle, somehow,” Ms. Crepuscular says. “It’s going to change the whole look of my living room. Given Mr. Pitfall’s current state of excitement, I dare do nothing else.”
Here the chapter breaks off for want, she admits, of inspiration.
Sounds about par for the course, in Scurvyshire. Frankly, the wheelbarrow on the mantle makes me think that she secretly long to go to Scurvyshire herself.
There’s a lesson in that roof business, but I can’t lay my finger on it.
Six years later, I now remember the roof lesson. Back when I was a young sprite, I used to do construction work. One of the jobs I was assigned involved salvaging a situation, where a homebuilder had used casual, unskilled day laborers to put roofs on some fairly nice homes. Without any direct supervision the laborers quickly realized that they could double their income by only nailing roughly half the shingles, leaving every other row floating free. The original workers, much like professor Facehead’s diggers, spoke no English, and their Arabic was non-existent. The one language they spoke fluently was the the same language with which money talks, because they made a killing, doing this as piecework.
Being that this was Denver, moderate breezes were not common, because when the winds picked up in the winter months, they skipped breezes and made a beeline for gale force. So the proud owners of these lovely new homes quickly notice that their shingles were moving with the wind, and yours truly had to perform corrective surgery in order to quiet the righteous indignation of the homeowners. What a debacle, well worth of Scurveyshire. Perhaps my youthful contribution to good housing will someday be recognized with a Patzer Prize all my own. 🙂
That is so funny. Those people must have been livid.
It was a bad deal. The neighborhood was fairly expensive and the homebuilder well reputed. Wind can be a real problem in Colorado and in those days they used “T-Lock” shingles that physically linked. They worked great for high winds, but only if every row was nailed properly. I won’t bore you with the details, but because of the interlocking nature, it was not a straightforward fix. Had I bought one of those homes I know that I would have been livid.