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Tiling the Savannah 2
Bloodcurdling, he thought, as he lay down another tile. Enough to make your joins uneven, really.
He'd come down from the sea towns ages ago, making his way inwards, into the heart of the great continent, a heart which he found was rarely dark, and if it was it usually meant it was night and what the hell was he doing wandering around at night, anyway?
He'd had nothing but a very small toolbox, which he lugged with great vim and vigour for the first twenty odd miles or so, with a dogged determination for a further five past that, and then with half-hearted despair for the remaining so many hundred he'd walked. A companion who left him at the last village had claimed it was only a hundred, at the most, and would he ever stop exaggerating about how many miles he's had to carry his stupid toolbox, the same toolbox no one was very much interested in, and had no intentions of making his day by asking him what was in the box, however, the man was convinced it had been at least a few hundred miles since he last saw the great wide expanse of the ocean stretching out behind him like some large body of water on which he got incredibly sick.
Tiling equipment.
That's what was in the toolbox.
Some orange plastic thing you used to tamp extra tiling cement on whatever you were putting the tiles down on. A little tub of tiling cement that he marveled at when he first saw it in the store at how tiny the tub of cement was. A stack of extremely light super new age material sort of tile-like things. A grouting pen, because he liked the look of it in the store, though he wasn't sure he was ever going to use it, really. A small box of tacks because he was fascinated by the coloured tops of the tacks while he was standing there in the line, waiting to pay. He liked jiggling the box in his hand. His fellow travelers didn't appreciate the jiggling as much as he did, though he did offer to let them try, expounding at length on the calming benefits of shaking the box of tacks. Some multicoloured sponges.
WEE-OO-WIKI!
So he had stopped here, at the world almost between two worlds-- savannah and treeland. He was dying for someone to ask him why, why there, why in possibly the most inhospitable place for tiling [1] he could possibly have chosen?
He'd so love for someone to ask him. As it stood, he just had monkeys, throwing things at him. Mostly things they'd stolen from his rucksack earlier in the day, and one orange plastic thing for spreading tiling cement. At first he was embarrassed to have monkeys throwing his good boxer shorts all over the savannah, but, as he was the only one actually within sight, he soon got over any potential embarrassment. This may have been a slight to the larger monkey community, but he figured he could think more politically correct thoughts when he got back to civilisation.
Besides, a few of the monkeys had started collecting his boxers again, so it's not like he was going to be too put out, trying to gather them all in again.
It was difficult, sure, tiling the savannah, but, even moreso with the monkeys turning over a new leaf, probably rewarding. Maybe in the end.
1 This was strictly an unscientific claim, he was simply guessing that there couldn't be many more places with that special combination of sand, grass, and rocks as to make tiling so difficult as he was finding it. Perhaps it would be slightly more difficult tiling in the Antarctic, but then again that was probably a matter of taste and cold weather vs. warmer weather preference.
disclaimer:
And there you have it, the product of far, far too much DIY.
You can tell we're based in England, the damn obsession's even caught me.
This is William Murphy, signing off for 12 News.
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