As the saying goes: Pay a man to tile your 12 toilets and showers, and you might get a half decent job done, but tile them yourself, and you’ll either become an expert or Upendo’s greatest cock-up since Chris bought return flights to Tasmania. Many of you will already have dismissed tiling as easy, and attributed any difficulty on my part to the fact that I’m undoubtedly a well meaning but hapless skinny jeans wearing excuse for a man. But like many things (with the notable exceptions of buying guns, contracting malaria, and beating rabid dogs), tiling is generally an easier affair in Britain than it is in Tanzania.
For a start: walls in Britain tend to be flat. I had never fully appreciated the significance of this fact until I set the first of 1,400 tiles onto a wall that looked like it had been plastered by Salvador Dali. Secondly, as any reluctant modern handyman will tell you: Youtube is the first line of defence in 21st century DIY. Some readers will be surprised to discover that the website which has wasted more man-hours than Anne Robinson’s surgeon can be used for anything other than watching dogs drive, cats play pianos and chubby Korean men ride imaginary horses, but it would usually be my first port of call before attempting anything which cannot be solved by BluTak alone. Here however, Youtube is no more an option than applying to Changing Rooms, and even if I had the spare 8 hours required to load a 3 minute video, the chances of the power remaining on during that time are about as likely as Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen not being arrested for homosexuality as soon as he landed.
Eventually, when I thought the battle almost won, I began to tile the floors – only to discover the difficulty of tiling a Rhomboid room with tiles that somebody (evidently with no imagination) created in some kind of shape with four right angles and sides of equal length. Absurd.
Last, but by no means least is the difficulty of dealing with a Tanzanian tradesman who's legacy to plumbing makes Lance Armstrong's to cycling look healthy. After laying the pipework in the showers, he cemented over them with an almost Himalayan zeal, in the process overtaking John Wayne as the world's biggest cowboy.
Add to all of this the presence of Betty and Gladys, two young local girls who see tiling as as much of a spectator sport as premiership football. Unfortunately I don't tile best under pressure, and although I don't mind the odd smattering of applause; a Mexican wave seems too far.
Hope you have enjoyed this, if not I will be mortar-fied...
