A man came to the door this lunchtime saying he and his team were in the area doing work on pruning trees and he'd noticed that the small tree that we have in front of our house was in danger of getting oversized and the roots might cause my wall to fall down and uproot my paving slabs. He talked for some time (as my lunch was going cold) about how he was doing some work for my neighbours and there was room in the skip and so he could offer me a very special deal to sort it out. He kept pointing to his van as if him having a van proved that he was a serious businessman and mentioning that he was working for my neighbours as if that meant that he was. I couldn't help thinking that this was rather an opportunistic pitch and that if I cared about the life of my tree (or the safety of my wall) then I maybe should entrust that job to someone who had been recommended to me, rather than someone who turned up in a sweatshirt with a company's name written on it. "It would usually cost you £140, but as we're in the area and there's room in the skip we will do it for £70" he told me. "You would save £70." Of course there was an even better way for me to save £70 which was to not give him £70 to carry out work that may or may not be required. I've lived in this house for 11 years now and the tree doesn't seem to have caused me any problems yet. Maybe I am sitting on a ticking time-bomb and maybe I will come home tomorrow to find my whole house has fallen down and I will wish that I had taken up the offer of this generous stranger, who seemed only to care about me. But I love to live dangerously.
If I want to be ripped off by a tradesman, I am quite capable of picking up my phone and finding one myself. I think it's overkeen if they come to your door. One of my golden rules of property ownership is to never buy anything from anyone who has rung my doorbell. Sometimes men come and try to sell me fish off a van. I can't believe that anyone would take them up on that. Of all the things that I might buy from a shady stranger, fish would come very low on that list. It's hard to believe that anyone buys stuff from men who ring their doorbell. There is a chance that they're genuine people, just looking for extra business, but the chance that they are conmen or at least slightly dodgy seems to far outweigh that tiny possibility.
But even though I have this hard/fast rule the man did charm me and engaged me long enough for my stir fry to become unpleasantly cool and part of me was considering taking him up on it, so he must have been good. If he had asked for £20 I might have taken the chance. But £70 sounded pretty much like the fee that would usually get charged to me. It only required him to cut off part of the tree with a chainsaw. Admittedly he had to know where to cut it and then put the branch in his empty skip.
But it was fun talking to him and wasting his time. And in doing so I got a blog out of it, which could be turned into a Metro article, so without him knowing it I was actually conning him and giving myself the opportunity to make tens of pounds.
The afternoon was spent in the company of another charming man, who didn't take my money, but my time and my ideas as he gently conned me into revealing more about myself that I intended. I was doing an interview for Stuart Goldsmith's Comedian's Comedian Podcast. It was very enjoyable, if a little sprawling and he made me consider my workaholism, my success and failure and how the character of Richard Herring on stage differed from the one off-stage. Talking to another comedian about these things made it a much more interesting interview and I appreciated being on the receiving end of a 2hour plus chat. Hopefully I gave some interesting insights. I think I was slightly contradictory in it, but was trying to be honest. I think I have lucked out with the way my career has turned out, even though it's not what I would have hoped for, but I am still human and occasionally envious of my more successful contemporaries. Yet the benefits of not being famous and controlling my own destiny and just being happy in myself perhaps outweigh what I have lost with my earlier ambitions not coming true. But it was interesting to be made to consider these things. Ten years ago I think I would have been bitter and angrier in such an interview and though some echoes of that lurk within me, I do realise how happy I am with what I've got. I am not sure if that entirely came across from the interview, but I enjoyed doing it anyway. The first part
is already up on iTunes so listen in.
