Tapping up a man who can

This month, Paul Carter fesses up to musical inadequacy and finds that he is made an offer he can’t refuse

Despite the perceived severity of my impairment (by others I should stress, not me), in my mind I’m Pelé in his prime. It has to be said that there are very few tasks or activities than I come across during the course of my daily life that I find beyond my capabilities.

Partly, this is because I know my limits. I am a terrible harpist, for instance.

In my long, bitter and partially drink addled lifetime I have come to have a relatively decent grasp of what I can and cannot do, and tend to find ways of avoiding those things I find difficult. Usually by just not doing them altogether. This did cause problems when I initially began living alone. The infamous summer of 1998 when I ran out of clean clothes was memorable for all concerned, although sadly for the wrong reasons. I also had to admit defeat recently when my garden began resembling a micro-climate from the Amazonian Basin. Nobody should need to machete their way through to their own back door.

But it’s true to say that most disabled people have their own coping mechanisms for dealing with various things, and workarounds that while seeming totally normal and routine to us, would look absolutely ridiculous to the normals. I still live in fear that I’m going to be thrown out of my local supermarket when I’m spotted climbing the shelves in the chiller cabinets, for example. How else am I supposed to get to my pretentious Bavarian Weissbier?

Nowadays, though, I opt to pay someone far more skilled, and if I’m honest, motivated, than me to take care of life’s little challenges. My toilet decided to break the other day, while the tap on my bath decided to seize shut on the same day. I can assure you, this is not a good combination.

I was regaling anyone who would listen this tale in my local just the other day when a man going by the moniker of Tony the Tap introduced himself. With a name like that, he was either a plumber or in the Mafia. It could be both I suppose, though I suspect he would be inferior in rank to someone with a name like Stabby Joe. Anyway, I digress. Tony the Tap knew where I lived, (terrifying) and invited himself round the following day to “sort out my pipes” (doubly terrifying). As it was, Tony the Tap came, saw and conquered my problem. If you’re interested, I had a foreign body in my outlet pipe. Story of my life. Sweetest thing is, he refused payment, stating he’d rather help people in the neighbourhood than accept money, which even for someone as cynical as me, was rather humbling. Who said there’s no such thing as society?