Our house in the BVI has been beset with a bunch of problems for a while now.  I hasten to add that it isn’t ours -we rent it.  We had produced photographic evidence to convince the landlord of the urgent need to address them, before the fabric of the building was seriously damaged.  To Graham’s astonishment she acceded to all of our recommendations and we were given the go-ahead to obtain quotes for all that needed to be done, which we duly did.

The range of costs was mind-boggling and we ended up recommending that she accept the quote proffered by a friend of  ours who has done work for us for years.  She did.  A deposit was obtained and the work commenced.  I was a bit surprised to come home one afternoon and find that the only person working on the house was a (probably) teenage boy who spoke no English.  Still, that was Clyde’s issue, not ours.   It mattered only that the work was done and done well.

Clyde knew that he had 3 weeks in which to rip out the kitchen cabinets and replace them with carpenter-built (as opposed to flat-packed) units.  Those were the three weeks during which we were at Les Terraces over Easter.  We came home to discover that we had neither units nor running water.  A week later we have running water, but few units.  And the wall-mounted unit that we do have is too shallow to accommodate a dinner plate (which I have discovered only this evening  ….. on Saturday night I had to call and ask about the doors for the same unit).  So now we start the misery of trying to make things right here – with a friend.

We should have heeded the old saw of “never do business with friends or family.”  Hopefully we won’t lose the friend.