mortar

 The old trousers do not fit any more, they are ten years old and the body has grown fatter. They are old trousers for working only now, threadbare and full of holes. Still, it will be important to lose wait.

The threads holding the button break , and the button flies under the bed. Never mind, put on a belt. An old pullover too, and now be ready to go upstairs . Take the one flight and turn on the gas heater by turning on the tap on the top of the bottle and applying a lighter to the gas jet. There is no point in freezing.

The level of water in the bucket is just too low. Take it downstairs, fill it at the bath tap. Take the full bucket upstairs into the room that will be the upstairs bathroom. Using the two litre plastic measuring jug fill six litres of water into the ninety litre black plastic mixing basin. Lug the forty kilo sack of mortar over to the basin, tear the top away from the paper sack. Pour the full sack of dry dusty mortar into the basin. Then take the electric mortar mixer and start to mix the water with the pale grey dust. Mix for a while, and then test the quality of the dark grey mortar. It is not wet enough. Add another three hundred millilitres of water, it is about right now.

Then finish filling the hole in the wall that had been left there by the building workers all those years ago. They had knocked a ragged slit into the old brick wall to accommodate some piping and electric cables. They had not closed the hole, just leaving it open. So that now it is left to the amateurs.

Using old bricks carefully chipped to size, and plenty of mortar fill up the slit behind the bricks, fill the crack from the bottom to the top. Simply said, that was the work of the full afternoon today.

The morning was spent mainly asleep.

Photographers should not do building work.