tradies

Plasterers are plasterers and plumbers are plumbers. Plasterers fling plaster all over your house, plumbers tramp mud everywhere. Carpenters are chippies and electricians are sparkies. One carpenter is a chippy, but is one electrician a sparky or a spark? Perhaps other trades have traditional nicknames but I don’t know them.  

They’re useful things, tradies. They fix stuff around the house that I can’t do, don’t know how to do, or would prefer not to do, like anything to do with electricity. I’ve rewired power points and batten light fittings in the past, but the coloured coatings on the wires can confuse: red is positive, black negative, and green earths things. What does a blue wire do?

My other dealing with tradies is on the early-morning road. They cut cyclists no slack, seem to hate us passionately. The bicycle inflames tradies’ notion of themselves as self-important people requiring get-out-of-my-way urgency. Builders in particular will run a cyclist off the road if the mood takes them.

But sparky Joe seems a nice bloke. The JRT sniffs his leg, approves. He arrives this morning at the appointed time. Tradies aren’t supposed to do that, but it’s only for a quote and his first call of the day. He’s young, tall, keeps his diary in his phone rather than in a yellowed, dog-eared bundle of papers on the front seat of his vehicle.

I ask the burning question and he tells me first up that an electrician is a sparky, with a y. Knowledgeable bloke.

We get to the business of his visit, a power point here, one over there, and an inspection of the switchboard and its charred fuses. He gives me three options; I’ll have a new switchboard, thank you. He photographs it with his smartphone, screws off the front plate and snaps the gizzards too.

We wander out the back and look at a light on the outside of the house above the rubbish bins I can’t see in the dark. The on-off switch is cactus. No problem. Standing in the cold, he quotes what seem eminently reasonable prices for the work to be done. Back inside I sit at my electronic diary and we synchronise our appointment time for Friday week.   

The JRT sniffs his leg again and we’re all organised.

Rock on.