The morning after we return home I’m on the phone with the bank for a long time. The man at the other end is explaining to me why the new card I just received has already been cancelled.
“There was a suspicious transaction on Saturday,” he says.
“But I didn’t even get the card until today,” I say. “How could someone know the number before I did?”
I listen to his explanation until it starts to sound less like something that might be the bank’s fault, and more like something that could be my fault, after which I lose interest.
“We’ll send you a replacement card,” he says.
“A replacement replacement card,” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
After I hang up I go outside to look at the collapsed garden wall. While we were away storm winds blew it over, exposing the garden to the lane that runs alongside it. My wife comes out to stare at the pile of bricks and ivy with me.
“Well, this is an unforeseen expense,” I say.
“I’m not sure who to ring about it,” she says.
“What about the guy who did the front wall?” I say. He was quick, professional, tidy and cheap, but I only knew him by the name on the side of his van: John Building Service.
“I don’t know how to find that guy,” my wife says. “Somebody recommended him, and I can’t remember who.”
“He was so good,” I say. “Building was his middle name.”
“I never had his number,” she says.
My wife does find someone to come and cart away all the ivy and smashed trellis, which makes the gap even more plain: I had never thought of the lane as busy, until I started to make eye contact with every passing driver as I sat in my kitchen. Without telling my wife, I start watching online videos called How to Build a Brick Wall.
“So it occurs to me,” I say a few days later when we’re having lunch.
“Yes,” my wife says, making an effort not to roll her eyes.
“There’s that 10-foot section where the wall is pretty much OK,” I say, “except for the bits the trellis pulled out when it went over.”
“Uh-huh,” my wife says, abandoning the effort not to roll her eyes.
“All I need to do is replace three or four loose bricks and stick in new trellis posts.”
“Do you know how to replace bricks?” she says.
“How hard can it be?” I say. “It’s just masonry.”
That is how I find myself at B&Q with my wife on Saturday morning, buying a quantity of mortar and two trowels.
“Why do you need two trowels?” she says.
“Because there were two kinds,” I say. “I won’t know which is best until I get going.”
“This card is declined,” says the man at the till.
“Oh yeah,” I say, turning to my wife. “You’ll have to pay.”
Despite the half hour I spent watching an Australian brickie demonstrate basic wall repair on YouTube, an unexpected problem crops up as soon as I begin: by chipping away the old mortar, I am creating further looseness. The four bricks I need to replace become five, then six, then seven. I adjust my calculations.
This middle one is sitting in the kitchen with my wife when I come in to fill my bucket with water.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Just mixing up some mud, as we say in the trade, possibly only in Australia.”
“He’s trying to fix the wall,” my wife says. I can feel the glance they are exchanging behind my back, but I don’t care. I am at the start of my masonry journey. If it goes well, I might even attempt the next section of wall. I have a vision of a van with Tim Building Service written on the side.
It does not go well. The trowel appears to be a wholly unsuitable tool for the uniform distribution of mortar. Most of it lands in a hedge on the other side of the wall. I end up slapping the rest down with my bare hands and prodding it into place, like a toddler. Tears of frustration prick the corners of my eyes as the loose bricks see-saw in the oozing gloop.
I’ll tell you what, though: no matter how amateurish your bricklaying, mortar still goes hard.
“I can’t believe it’s worked,” my wife says, poking the brick.
“It’s ugly,” I say, “but you won’t notice once I’ve pointed everything.”
“Do you know how to point?” she says.
I retire to my office to watch a basic pointing video, where I learn that there is a third kind of trowel.
