Flying Roofs

Pork roll for Arthur $6, boiled egg ($1) added as an afterthought. Without him today the roof sheet we got up could not have been secured. For the long overhang now how to hold the two sheets together? Pop-riveting was no good, we had tried that previously. Even pressing up from below failed to make the rivet pop. Arthur's answer was three small squares of corrugated iron cut from the sheet up the side that Cat was using to keep her dogs — one-eyed Ruff and old, lame and doddery Daisy — within the yard. Drill through the iron and after shaping the corrugations place against the hole through the fibreglass. Flat-head long screws were better than rivets (the rivets we had were too short in any case); green plugs attached underneath could be twisted on with a pair of pliers. Pannayoti the carpenter screwed down from the roof and beneath twisting with the pliers, while Arthur rested against the pillar of the side fence supervising, re-shaping the tin as needed and fingering through the cases and jars for the best screws. (Later he realised screws with washers top and bottom would have been simpler and easier, but one can't think of everything on the instant.) The new sheet's long overhang on the western side needed to be properly secured. Had Arthur been on hand from the beginning the overhang would have been placed on the eastern side, as the weather and wind in our corner of Melbourne arrived westward. To date the old sheet had flown off four or five times, landing in the neighbours’ driveway on each occasion. It had happened two or three times while Señora Anita lived there and after she sold with Chris and Jacinta in occupation, their two young ones, Xavier and Annie, in the firing line. A few weeks before too the bottom ridge tile had inexplicably fallen from the front corner of the house roof and shattered on the concrete. Another near disaster quite impossible to fathom. Could the westerly have sent the heavy tile tumbling? (Presumably it had come loose over the years.) Arthur thought the canny old possums that he watched evenings scampering over the roofs and through the trees might be responsible. With Arthur the replacement tile had been cemented in place a few days earlier, the two of us working either side on a pair of ladders. Inestimable aid from our wonderful neighbour. For the first forty odd years we had never spoken with Arthur. Some words were passed with his mother and father while they were alive, never Arthur. Many years before Bab had passed parsley and potato over the side fence on that side and received lemons and plums in return from Mrs. Spiers. It was Slavo who first broke the ice with Arthur when he replaced the spouting for Bab. When Arthur appeared there Slavo had offered him a beer and we all took off from there. At the bakery the two varieties of onion were omitted for Arthur's roll. Carrot, lettuce, crushed peanuts and tomato (which was fifty cents extra) was OK. Buttered.