2317. Building conversion
© Bruce Goodman 29 December 2021


I worked in a hardware store. One afternoon the boss called me to his office. I thought I was going to get the sack but it wasn’t that at all. It was sort of a promotion.

He said he had three sons and a daughter and two of the sons and the daughter had done okay. The third son had done enormously well. He was the richest in the family by far. What he did was buy an old barn or an old milking shed or an old church or something. He would live on the property in an old caravan and convert and renovate the building to perfection. Thus far he had renovated six buildings and sold each for millions. He loved his work but never took time off. It was an obsessive twelve hour day seven days a week.

To be perfectly honest, said the boss, my son needs a hand. You would live on the property (in your own comfortable caravan of course) and be put on a huge wage and given a vehicle. Would I be interested? It was several hours drive away.

Would I be interested? It’s something I’d absolutely love to do; although it would depend on whether I got along okay with the boss’s son. And provided of course he didn’t have a raging misogynistic attitude like many do against female carpenters. And try, added the boss, to get Kevin (that was the son’s name) to take a bit of time off.

Well that was several months ago. Kevin and I have decided to live in the latest place we’ve just finished and call it home.

“That was the plan,” said the boss.

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