To be honest with you I may have looked a bit odd yesterday – cute perhaps, but unusual to say the least; you see I’ve been doing a spot of painting and decorating this week (ever since we returned from our holiday in Nerja, Southern Spain) at my sister Mary’s flat down the road and, of course, you don’t wear your best clothes for messy jobs. Hence I had opted to wear some of my old but colourful clothes – bright orange jogger bottoms (spoilt for normal use by a few drops of blue paint when I painted our railings last year), a pink top with puff sleeves and a yellow flouncy sundress over the top. Before stepping out of the house into the sunshine I donned a pink jacket, my new pink floral knapsack and my new floral sunglasses (the latter two being purchases from one of the cheap Chinese shops in Nerja and well worth every Euro for the smiles and nods of approval that they had attracted).
A few metres from our gate I was greeted by a line of happy workmen who are currently widening the pavement to make a cycle-path (that’s often how we do it in England); the bearded man operating the digger turned and smiled his hello, and three other men with hand tools also stopped and looked up from their work to say “Good morning” as I approached on the other side of the red barriers. I was suddenly struck by the fact that they all wore bright orange trousers and fluorescent yellow/green jackets – not at all dissimilar to my own colour scheme.
“Hey,” I said, glancing down at my outfit, “I match you – I could come and work for you!”
“Yes,” said the tallest man who had lovely dimples and perfect white teeth, “but we wouldn’t get much work done – would we?”
Well, I was rather taken aback, mainly because the young man could not have been more than thirty years old. Of course, I was flattered and after the initial gush I thought for a moment what a good job it was that I’d worn my sunglasses which, aside from being pretty, hide the crows feet around my eyes.
“No we wouldn’t,” I replied (just to let him know that I took his comment as a compliment), “but I must be off as I have painting and decorating to do.”
Four hours later I met the workmen again as I was going home.
“You haven’t been painting,” said the tall young man.
“No,” agreed the old man beside him who must have been in his late forties (it’s all relative), “you’re far too clean!”
“I’m just a good painter,” I laughed, “but I’m sure I have some spots on me.”
“No, we don’t believe it,” they joshed.
“Well look at that,” I said, pointing to a big splodge of white on orange half-way up my thigh.
“Now you’re just teasing us,” grinned the handsome young worker while the older man nodded.
I had to walk by the happy band of workers again this morning (still wore my sunglasses despite a lack of sunshine).
“You’re still teasing us,” they said.
I laughed with them. I, too, still thought it was funny – and I was still wearing those orange pants with the splodge. After a long and busy day of work on the flat there are a few more spots now. I wasn’t teasing – honest!
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