The true story of how Tag almost dies.
My life is fraught with danger. Like… gutter cleaning. Some of you think I am being sarcastic and some of you (those who have, for example, seen my house) already have your heart in your mouth.
For those of you who haven’t ever been to my house, the highest part of my roof is three and a half stories high. The ‘house’ part of the roof is steep, but then there is a softly sloping veranda roof that is two meters wide. So while you’re on the roof there are two gutters to clean, the house gutter, which is about a foot off the veranda roof and the veranda gutter, which overlooks the ground.
I started cleaning on the high side-constantly harassed by flies, the growing heat of the steel and weird little bugs that were forever climbing into my gloves. Then mum wants me to LEAN OUT OVER EMPTY SPACE and cut some branches. So for a while I am distracted by this-about a quarter of the roof done.
Then it starts to rain. Softly, then steadily heavier. Now, I’m not retarded and I learnt a lot of height safety abseiling off eight meter high cliffs with Peter Blunt so I say: “Okay, take the sheers, it’s going to be to slippery up here soon.”
The sheers are retrieved without incident and I crawl up to the house gutter so I can walk hunched over, one hand above that gutter, so if I fall I can grab it and then I have two meters of steel to flail about on before I drop.
But hang on. It’s PISSING down, I’m already wet through, but the top gutter is filling and overflowing WITHOUT DRAINING. ‘Fuck’, I think, ‘I’m already wet, I’m just going to have to clean as I go.’
So now I’m soaked. I mean, like I got dropped in a pool, soaked. My underwear is wet through, there is no inch of my skin that is not wet. Great for the cold I finally showed signs of recovering from YESTERDAY. I take off my gloves because they are just too uncomfortable (and full of bugs) and just start pulling out clumps of leaves by hand. This is around the point I notice how sharp the edge of the gutter is. I grab it at one point and realize: ‘If I fall, this isn’t going to cut right through my hand, but it’s going to cut to the bone.’
Now, I’m staying the fuck away from the veranda gutter, just cleaning the house gutter, but by the time I get back around to the low part of the roof I’ve been up there in the rain about ten minutes. There is no possible way I could be any wetter. I can’t see, because of the water on my glasses. I almost can’t breathe-the rain is so heavy.
I hand down my buckets of leaves and bugs, then try and get off the roof.
It’s not happening. No way, no how. The roof is too slippery, the ladder is too far down. The only way I could do it is to lay on my belly and slide over the sharp edge of the gutter and the huge bolts sticking up from the steel. I would come out bleeding. Badly.
Fuck it. I’m not in the mood for injury.
So I stand back up and go around the house again. And take off my shoes and socks, which are tossed off the roof, then I lay on my belly to hand my useless glasses to my mother.
Now I am barefoot, saturated and blind to anything that isn’t less than three feet away.
The only logical step now is a kamikaze leap onto the water tank.
I have to admit, my brain did stop for a moment and think: ‘wait, are you really going to leap from a wet slippery roof onto a wet slippery water tank when you don’t even know if it will hold your weight and you probably won’t make the distance and fall, horribly, to a broken leg or worse?’
Thankfully, my body didn’t stop and by the time I had completed that thought, I was already ON the water tank. Sliding off the water tank, feet first on my belly, was no drama at all. So then I slogged inside, coughing up my lungs to get into a warm shower.
The sun was out by the time I got dressed again.
For those of you who haven’t ever been to my house, the highest part of my roof is three and a half stories high. The ‘house’ part of the roof is steep, but then there is a softly sloping veranda roof that is two meters wide. So while you’re on the roof there are two gutters to clean, the house gutter, which is about a foot off the veranda roof and the veranda gutter, which overlooks the ground.
I started cleaning on the high side-constantly harassed by flies, the growing heat of the steel and weird little bugs that were forever climbing into my gloves. Then mum wants me to LEAN OUT OVER EMPTY SPACE and cut some branches. So for a while I am distracted by this-about a quarter of the roof done.
Then it starts to rain. Softly, then steadily heavier. Now, I’m not retarded and I learnt a lot of height safety abseiling off eight meter high cliffs with Peter Blunt so I say: “Okay, take the sheers, it’s going to be to slippery up here soon.”
The sheers are retrieved without incident and I crawl up to the house gutter so I can walk hunched over, one hand above that gutter, so if I fall I can grab it and then I have two meters of steel to flail about on before I drop.
But hang on. It’s PISSING down, I’m already wet through, but the top gutter is filling and overflowing WITHOUT DRAINING. ‘Fuck’, I think, ‘I’m already wet, I’m just going to have to clean as I go.’
So now I’m soaked. I mean, like I got dropped in a pool, soaked. My underwear is wet through, there is no inch of my skin that is not wet. Great for the cold I finally showed signs of recovering from YESTERDAY. I take off my gloves because they are just too uncomfortable (and full of bugs) and just start pulling out clumps of leaves by hand. This is around the point I notice how sharp the edge of the gutter is. I grab it at one point and realize: ‘If I fall, this isn’t going to cut right through my hand, but it’s going to cut to the bone.’
Now, I’m staying the fuck away from the veranda gutter, just cleaning the house gutter, but by the time I get back around to the low part of the roof I’ve been up there in the rain about ten minutes. There is no possible way I could be any wetter. I can’t see, because of the water on my glasses. I almost can’t breathe-the rain is so heavy.
I hand down my buckets of leaves and bugs, then try and get off the roof.
It’s not happening. No way, no how. The roof is too slippery, the ladder is too far down. The only way I could do it is to lay on my belly and slide over the sharp edge of the gutter and the huge bolts sticking up from the steel. I would come out bleeding. Badly.
Fuck it. I’m not in the mood for injury.
So I stand back up and go around the house again. And take off my shoes and socks, which are tossed off the roof, then I lay on my belly to hand my useless glasses to my mother.
Now I am barefoot, saturated and blind to anything that isn’t less than three feet away.
The only logical step now is a kamikaze leap onto the water tank.
I have to admit, my brain did stop for a moment and think: ‘wait, are you really going to leap from a wet slippery roof onto a wet slippery water tank when you don’t even know if it will hold your weight and you probably won’t make the distance and fall, horribly, to a broken leg or worse?’
Thankfully, my body didn’t stop and by the time I had completed that thought, I was already ON the water tank. Sliding off the water tank, feet first on my belly, was no drama at all. So then I slogged inside, coughing up my lungs to get into a warm shower.
The sun was out by the time I got dressed again.