Now I’m not going to mention any names (believe it or not, my blog can be a secret confessional, in case you have any embarrassing tales to impart) so please do not press me for the true identity of the guilty grandfather in question. But don’t get too excited because the confession I received by means of an email today did not relate to a crime as such, unless you consider a misleading omission a lie, and even then a lie isn’t exactly perjury unless uttered under oath – is it? In this instance the “omission” would hardly rate even as a venial sin (according to the Catholic Clergy – “The gravity of a lie [normally a venial – lesser- sin] is measured against the nature of the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims.”) In other words, read on in the confidence that no real harm was done, but also that the circumstances were rather humorous.

A male friend of ours, living in a country other than England, was asked at short notice if he would oblige by babysitting his young grandson. I might as well just let you read the email:

What could “that” be? What do so many men like to see a woman do? (Don’t worry, all will be revealed in a minute.) You may be surprised to learn that it is nothing obvious, like wearing black stockings and stiletto heels, or lap dancing, or cavorting to music in a provocative manner (pah, they can see that on the big screen up at the gym any time of the week!).

It seems that really, contrary to popular supposition, most men are drawn to the less common sight of a healthy-looking specimen of womanhood dressed unprepossessingly in old work clothes with paint stains and an old frilly apron over the top, her unwashed hair tied up in a skewiff ponytail, her face and arms besmirched with spots of drying mortar, and similar drops on her legs and shoes (not pretty sandals but ugly “crocs” in hot pink); and, perhaps most importantly, she works at a task more usually associated with men – like bricklaying or re-pointing a brick wall. Take yesterday, for example…

No sooner had I mixed the mortar in a bucket – three parts sand to one part Portland cement (thanks to Google, and coincidentally, I was born in Portland, Victoria) – than a car drew up to the pavement where I was working…

“Excuse me,” said the driver in order to get my attention (considering that I was bending down at the time). Two sets of eyes peered at me through the open window but the driver, a man in his thirties, did the talking. “Is there a Tesco, or similar, supermarket around here?”

“There is a Sainbury’s straight along this road for about a mile and on the right,” I directed.

“You’re doing a good job,” he smiled, looking momentarily from me to the wall, which hadn’t been started yet (at this session).

“Not nearly as good as you could do, I don’t doubt,” I laughed. I had noted some spots of powdery mortar, not dissimilar to my own, on his cheery face.

“We’re doing the same as you on a place down the road,” he admitted but he didn’t offer to take over from me.

Ten minutes later they drove past from the other direction and tooted the car horn – fellow artisans… or trowel mates.

It was neither the sunniest nor the warmest of days and yet the whole world seemed to be passing by on my stretch of pavement, and many people I saw twice. It seemed that nearly every time I bent down someone (mostly men) would pass by and say:

“I like to see a woman doing that!”

Folk were so pleasant and cheery that I had occasionally to stop my work and respond to the words of encouragement and wonder. It’s uncanny how many bricklayers are out there. One even offered me an apprenticeship, to which I declined on the basis that he probably couldn’t afford to employ me because I would be “too slow”; he argued that I would get faster but I just laughed and went back to my wall (didn’t have the heart to tell him that my heart wasn’t really in bricklaying).

I was bending down again when I was interrupted by a different comment.

“I’ve done that!” came the voice of a man from Somerset (or so I thought).

He was nice, rather younger than most of the middle-aged bricklayers who had passed by.

“Are you a bricklayer?,” I asked, more for fun than anything else – after all, a bricklayer wouldn’t put it like that.

“No,” he laughed and showed a set of sparkling white teeth, “I work for Rolls Royce.”

“In Somerset?” I showed off my great knowledge.

“Bristol,” he informed and went on, “I re-pointed my wall, just as you’re doing, and as I reached the bottom of the bag of sand I found, in another plastic bag, a sausage of cement!”

“Did you pull out the sand and start again?”

“No, it went in alright and looked alright; the funny thing is that, after five years the sand is still there and the wall is still standing,” said the nice-looking, youngish Bristolian who is down in Dawlish for two weeks.

We continued chatting for quite a while until at last I thought I had better return to the wall before the mortar was dry. And no, I didn’t ask his name – thought he might mistake me for being single (especially as I was doing a man’s job outside) – but it occurred to me that any single ladies out there looking for “Mr Right” might have greater success meeting him by her front wall than on a modern dance floor. Of course the danger is that the dreamboat may be after you for your expertise as a bricklayer, in which case you would have to tell him “There is mortar life.”