I’ve been having a high old time – on my roof. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced a strange feeling of pleasure at being above it all.
Of course, I hadn’t gone onto the roof simply for the sake of, you know, going on the roof. I’d gone up yonder to repair something. And when I say “repair”, you know that I mean “patch up inexpertly”.
The problem lay with the Sky satellite dish. I’d become aware in recent days of a strange knocking noise on the roof. At first, I’d attributed it to birds, who sometimes hold dances and parties there.
But, one day in the back-garden, I looked up – recommend this, folks – and noticed that a piece of the dish had broken away and was dangling.
Although I was in the middle of a busy schedule of thinking, I abandoned that immediately and hied myself up for a day on the tiles. Took me 15 minutes in the end.
The dish was rusty, but it just required the deft use of duct tape to patch things up. I can’t even tell if it affects the picture because, ironically enough, I don’t have Sky any more.
Until recently, I managed to get a few main stations through the dish without a subscription. But then the Sky box packed up, so I can only watch a limited amount of telly through iPlayer on my Now TV gizmo.
Mostly, I have to watch programmes on my laptop. What a state of affairs for a man in my position. At least my position on the roof allowed respite from the everyday injustices of life down below.
After completing my task, and feeling good about myself for not making a hash of it (waits in anticipation for crashing sound that usually accompanies such misplaced confidence), I sat down on the tiles, master of nothing I surveyed.
I should say that I don’t have a heid for heights. I get a shiver up my legs just watching someone on TV look over a ledge at a long drop.
But the roof at the back of my wee suburban semi is lower than the next row of the houses up the hill. Peeking over the top of the roof at the other side lower down is what gives me the willies.
Otherwise, it was grand up here, with my heid a bit nearer the clouds. Sundry garden birds popped by, out of curiosity or concern (“what’s he up to now?”). Perhaps they thought my trespassing on their domain was the height of cheek.
How curiously relaxing it was. I could see how the apple tree and other green beasties reached up for the light. Life is upwards.
That said, whenever I’m out on the tiles, I recall a tale a mate told me about a friend of his who’d gone off his onion and taken to his roof – where he sat naked until they coaxed him down by means of putting a net over his head.
With that cautionary tale in mind, I come back down to earth. But whenever I need to go back on the roof again, doubtless to clear gutters or investigate leaks, I’ll enjoy once more taking a little time out to feel all high and mighty for a while.
