Time to get the sledgehammers out

Life is full of surprises, especially if you are living in Thailand, as a long-time English resident discovered recently. His work involves a lot of overseas travel and after one exhausting trip he was happy to get home to his Sukhumvit apartment and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

His dreams were rudely interrupted early the next morning when he awoke to a loud pounding on his bedroom door. Puzzled and extremely irritated, he opened the door to be faced by the alarming sight of a bunch of men wielding sledgehammers. They resembled a mafia wrecking crew. They seemed equally surprised by his presence and wanted to know what he was doing there. He told them he lived there, which he thought was a reasonable explanation.

It turned out that the landlord had not received proper planning permission to build this particular apartment which was an extension, and had been ordered by the authorities to demolish it. A notice from the landlord explaining the situation had apparently been mistakenly delivered to the apartment next door where a Japanese couple lived. The couple thought it was their apartment which was about to be demolished and had already moved out to new accommodation, leaving their neighbour blissfully unaware of the pending sledgehammer assault.

So the Englishman had no choice but to grab a few belongings and find a nearby hotel as the sledgehammers laid waste to his abode. The landlord has apologised and for the past few weeks has been paying for the victim’s hotel room. But the Englishman has been suffering a few nightmares in which sledgehammers unsurprisingly play a leading role.

Wielding the axe

The sledgehammer can be quite a formidable weapon, hence the expression “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”, meaning disproportionate force to solve a problem. This expression may have been used a few months ago in Bangkok when a couple of old ladies attacked a parked car that was blocking their entrance by wielding axes. They quickly became known as the “axe aunties”. Little did they know at the time but the ensuing investigation uncovered a major racket involving five illegal markets and a herd of corrupt officials. The markets have now been ordered closed. Well done, ladies. Just imagine what would happen if the aunties got hold of some sledgehammers.

The tea boy

The mention of sledgehammers brings memories of when I was a college student and took a temporary summer job with the local brewery putting up marquees and tents for fetes, fairs and exhibitions in Berkshire and neighbouring counties. One of our assignments was the annual Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire.

I was a skinny wretch at the time and some of the regular crew didn’t think I was pulling my weight when it came to the physical side of the job. At Farnborough, we had to put up a marquee which required using a sledgehammer to drive in the iron stakes which were to support the marquee. But the patch we were assigned was not grass, but tarmac … very hard tarmac. With an evil grin, the foreman handed me the sledgehammer and said casually “just knock in the stakes and let us know when you are finished”. He then wandered off to watch the ensuing fun with his mates.

I had enough trouble simply lifting the heavy sledgehammer, let alone bashing the stakes into the resistant tarmac. It prompted derisive guffaws from the crew and even a few passers-by, watching me staggering around fighting a losing battle with the sledgehammer. In that short time, I already had painful blisters forming on my hands. They eventually rescued me and sent me off to get them all a cup of tea. That was all I was good for.

A rose by any other name

I experienced a number of jobs during student vacations, fortunately none of the others involving sledgehammers. I didn’t totally escape physical work, however, and experienced a lengthy spell on a seed farm which involved plenty of digging with forks and spades in between taking discrete naps behind the greenhouses.

The money was poor and my first wage packet was so small I even queried the pitiful amount. It turned out that through an office miscommunication, my name had been written down as “Rose” or something similar, and I had been given the wage of a female worker.

I hasten to point out that this was back in 1963 when wage discrimination between men and women was a norm, unjust though it undoubtedly was. Anyway, since that experience I have always been a strong proponent of equal pay.

Cellar dweller

There was a time when I worked in a wine cellar in the East End of London. The dank cellar was under a railway arch on the north bank of the Thames and I had to walk across Tower Bridge every morning. It was a strange sort of environment and felt a bit like being transported back into Victorian times.

It soon became clear that some of the regular workers had quite a taste for the wine they were supposed to be labelling and there were frequent “accidental” breakages with glasses quickly on hand to take on the spillage.

Even though I spent only a few weeks in the cellar, by the time I left I had already adopted a taste for Chardonnay, thanks to “accidental spillage”, of course.