Fresh Air, Don't Care

“Let’s go for a walk,” said Dad.

 Elliot was immediately suspicious. It was midday on a grey, January Saturday. He’d been horizontal on the couch, with the football on, for no more than twenty minutes and was exactly where he intended to be for the whole weekend.

“A walk??”

“Yeah, why not? A brisk walk down to the town and back. It’ll be good for us, some fresh air before it starts raining again.”

 This was a very out of character suggestion. Not that Dad didn’t go for walks, he went for them all the time but usually with Mom and the dog. Elliot couldn’t think of a single time they’d gone for a casual walk together.

“Where’s Mom? Why don’t you ask her?”

“Oh, she’s busy with her duo lingo. Jem-a-pel this and bon-jour that. Come on, we’ll be out and back in 30 minutes.” He clapped his hands in a manner meant to convey that the matter had been decided.

Elliot wasn’t fully convinced but Dad’s alacrity was disarming. Maybe a walk would be nice. His Dad was a man of perpetual business and productivity. He worked hard all week and when he wasn’t working, he was throwing himself into projects. There was always something to be built or mended, painted or dismantled.

Elliot’s Grandad had been exactly the same, except more. He’d build radios from scratch, create tables and chairs from trees he cut down himself. It struck Elliot that there was a pretty clear degradation in practical skills over the generations, his abilities to roll up his sleeves and fix something amounted to little more than turning whatever was broken off, and then on again, in hope that it would now work. To be fair it often did. His kids would probably be amazed he could tie his own shoes with his bare hands.

“Ok! Let’s do it.”

“Fantastic” said Dad with a big smile. Then with a clearly deliberate casualness he stroked his chin as if something had just occurred to him. “You know I just remembered something I could do with your help with.”

Elliot didn’t buy the routine for a moment. He was annoyed at himself, what a rookie mistake. He’d gotten off the couch and signaled he was up for going outside. God knows what he was in for now but he’d been successfully duped, this much he knew.

“You said we were going for a walk.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. This will take two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

***

 Ten minutes later Elliot found himself at the bottom of a frozen and slippery ladder with Dad explaining the intricacies of ladder stability.

“So, you make sure to put your foot solidly here, and your hands firmly here. I’ll nip up to the chimney and apply the filler to the cracks and we’ll be done. As easy as that.”

Dad was dressed like he was going to the north pole and was clearly relishing the prospect of climbing this rickety contraption. It was a blustery, bleak day, but not nearly dark enough to justify the head torch he was sporting.

“Ok, and have you thought about what happens if you slip? You’re going to need your hands free up there. It’s a thirty foot drop easy. Have you never seen an episode of ’24 Hours in A&E’? Every second episode has the big red phone ringing because some dad has fallen off a roof!”

“Ah ha!” exclaimed Dad, clearly thrilled by this line of questioning and all this talk of possibly fatal accidents. “That’s where this comes in,” he signalled to a rope that to Elliot’s uneducated eyes looked like it had been fashioned into a noose of some kind.

“Oh, so if you fall, we hang you to put you out of your misery. That’s a great comfort,” he said sarcastically.

“No, no, don’t be daft. When I get up there, I tie this around the chimney block and myself, therefore securing me.”

“Right, so the ladder falls and your left dangling from the roof by this rope. That’s the stringent safety measures we’ve taken is it? And what if the chimney block can’t support your weight huh? What if you fall thirty feet strapped to a ton of loose brick and mortar? You think that’s going to end well?”

“Hmmm,” it was very clear that he hadn’t considered this outcome. “Nah, it’ll be fine. These houses were built to last. Have I told you about this wonder filler? It’s really amazing stuff. The way it works is……”

“Uggghhhhh,” exhaled and exasperated Elliot who was regretting ever shifting from the couch more and more with every passing minute. “Lets get on with it then.”

As Dad started his ascent the inevitable rain began. Elliot, white knuckled as he gripped the ladder, got ever damper, and shivered. He’d deliberately not dressed appropriately in an effort to put a time limit on this little activity but that had backfired terribly. Dad didn’t seem to have noticed his unsuitable attire and now, in his flipflops, shorts, dressing gown ensemble he was really wishing he’d put a jacket on. Speaking of wishes, he should have asked mom to have the phone ready to ring an ambulance. This was such a bad idea.

Dad had finally arrived at the top and was starting to secure himself to the base of the chimney when he reached out to steady himself using the gutter, his hand grasped at thin air and he fell backwards! Momentarily. The ladder crunched angrily against the wall as he kicked out trying to steady himself. Thankfully the rope had been secured just in time, so instead of completing an elegant backflip that would have ended catastrophically, he instead dangled off the chimney like a semi dislodged Christmas decoration.

Elliot’s heart was in his mouth as he scrambled to position the ladder back under Dad’s feet. In his efforts to put it back in position he stubbed his toe badly enough to draw blood but couldn’t let go of the ladder long enough to investigate further. It seems there are reasons steel toe boots are more popular than flip flops in the construction industry.

“Woooaaah” chuckled Dad, now safely reperched on the final ladder rung. “See I told you!” he shouted down gesturing proudly to his home-made safety device and giving a thumbs up.

“For the love of God put your hands on the chimney! You almost died!”

“Oh, don’t be so extreme. Just keep holding the ladder and we’ll have these cracks filled in three minutes flat.”

***

A full hour and twenty minutes later Dad and Elliot (positively blue in complexion) were back in the living room.

“We were just supposed to go for a walk” chattered Elliot.

“Well, we get a hell of lot of fresh air, didn’t we?”

 Elliot rolled his eyes and wondered if he’d ever get this chill out of his bones.

“J’ai perdu mon animal,” Mom recited to herself as she passed through, headphones in, and ignoring the two sodden men making puddles on the carpet.

Suddenly there was a long creaking noise followed by what sounded like a meteorite landing in the back garden.

Running to the window Dad and Elliot looked out at the shattered remains of the chimney and a decent amount of its surrounding roof. As they stared a flimsy plastic portion of gutter dropped unceremoniously onto the destruction like someone adding a cherry to an ice-cream Sunday.  

Dad puffed out his cheeks and rubbed his hands together.

“Well, this is going to be a big job. You get the ladder back out and I’ll grab the head torch.”

“What are you talking about?!” exclaimed Elliot backing away from his Dad like he was potentially hazardous material. “Half the roof fell off, this needs a proper builder, professionals!”

“Oh nonsense! The damage is mostly cosmetic. We’ll have this patched up and as good as new before dinner.”

Elliot slumped down on the couch, his still wet cloths clinging to him, resigned to what was suddenly looking like a very long weekend.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said to himself morosely, shaking his head.