3. Language barrier

I don’t speak tradie. At least not with any fluency. I’ve had to get up to speed quick smart getting the house in order so I can sell it.

There’s been all sorts through, plumbers, roofers, builders, painters, maybe twenty in the last six weeks, each with their own patois. Tim was very fond of his half sea fog. Wayne arrived with the valley flashings.

I was way out of practice. Even when I dropped it down an octave.

I couldn’t afford any fuck-ups this time round either - I needed good and clear comms - and wanted to make sure that I could converse in the mother tongue naturally. Language is for speaking, otherwise we lose it. Tradie is no different.

My only recent experience with the lingo was a year or so back, when a plumber first asked -  then demanded - that I tell him where my Toby was. I had no idea. Before I could tell him where he was, I had to know who he was. Or she. They. No judgement.

Undeterred by my blank expression, he boxed on “Your Toby, mate. Where is it?” All shouty, and clearly exasperated by my unwillingness to share Toby’s location.

Volume of delivery wasn’t the issue; just clarity of message.

At the third - louder still - enquiry into Toby’s whereabouts, and just as I was going to surrender and ask for more information; he finally twigged and asked instead for the water main.

Turns out, according to the nice woman at the council, the toby stopcock is 1.8 meters from the front left boundary.

I dread calling councils, or any organisation that thinks it's ok to play ‘Welcome Home’ more than twice while you’re on hold.

This wasn’t my first call to the Heretaunga District Council. I’d forgotten what they were like. It’s quite the experience.

For a start they answer the phone in person. Yeah I know, right? It came as such a shock the first time I rang, whoever answered had to say ‘hello’ three times while I braced myself for Sir Dave to start.

Kia Ora for that.

Then, after the weather chattery and the how-can-i-helps, rather than palm you off to someone else, they climb right in, clearly charged with being able to solve most requests. Simply put, the person who answers the phone can find Toby.

Extraordinary behaviour. First a man on the moon, and now this. Humanity’s progress knows no bounds.

The experience was so effortless, I was almost tempted to pay my rates. Almost. I did the next best thing and moved the bill straight to the top of the pile.

It was going to be one of those days that could only be made better by inserting a USB stick the right way on the first go.

Toby was, according to council and Google Earth, under my adult sized hedge. I turned down three offers from the council to send someone around to conduct a search as (a) they probably had enough on their plate given Gabrielle had just come through and (b) how hard could it be?

Harder than you’d think. 

For a start the hedge is about five feet wide. I'd decided, with absolutely no information at all, that Toby would be somewhere in the middle. I had also decided, using the exact same data, that it would be easy to find.

Both of these things were incorrect.

Curiosity is an acquired skill. Had I bothered to investigate before attacking my perfectly innocent hedge from the wrong side, I would have known this. But all in all, finding Toby was one of the cheaper life lessons.

On the plus side I now know things. Tradie things.

Tradie, like all the classic languages, has a few quirks. There isn’t, for example, a direct translation of ‘hello’ in tradie. I looked it up. There’s a ‘hey’- that's about as close as you get.

It’s an economic dialect. No two ways. It’s based on an old belief, that at birth we're all given a fixed number of words to use throughout our entire lives, and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

This means you skip not just the pleasantries, but also quite a lot of detail usually required in other conversations, in other languages, and in society in general.

Couple of other tips. There are no silent letters in tradie. Not that I could tell. You should always drop the ‘g’ at the end of a word. Or the ‘h’ in hey. Or any other letter you don’t much like the sound of.

I was so excited about trying all of this out, that when the Alchemy Plumbing boys turned up to install a dishwasher and spruce up the dunny, I didn’t even bother rehearsing, and front footed it before they’d even had a chance to park the Ranger across the driveway.

“Yeah mate, Toby’s under the hedge … case y'wonderin.”

Boom. It’s all in the delivery: quick, throwaway, with a smidge of couldn't-give-a-rat’s. You’re welcome.

Go on. Try it.

You’ll be showing off y' builder’s crack in no time.

The Full Catastrophe is a real-time account of change, chaos and consequence. Up next: The Full Catastrophe.