It\’s been a bummer of a day today… I got up early as usual with Pépe, and when I sat down with my first coffee of the day, I found a text message sent by John (working on finca) to say that our 8am appointment would now be 10am, unfortunately I had not seen this last night, as I don\’t take my phone to bed, unlike some people! I was not happy, because this was not of my doing, it turned out that John was the one who had helped himself to my wardrobe, it was at his house, and I was doing him a favour by collecting it in the trailer and returning it. It was also planned that I would then take all the reclaimed bits, that Ramillo wanted, by trailer to his house.
Just after 9am I had a call from Marcela, who by this time was on a bus to somewhere, to say John had phoned, and he was at the finca, his wife would be coming at 10am to take me to the apartment.
10.20am no sign of Senora \’John\’, so I phoned, she was still at home, so I cancelled that, I wasn\’t waiting any longer. I set off with the trailer to collect Ramillo and his things, only to find on my arrival, that he was tied up with work on the house, they didn\’t think to phone me, because they were expecting me to arrive with the wardrobe, I was ready to blow a blood vessel.
Then John took me into the kitchen, he was still bristling from the unfounded criticism from the stainless steel worktop fabricator, and showed me more faults with the work, I took a photo or two, and set off to do battle.
Unfortunately, most of Bello was cordoned off, because Alvaro Uribe was in town on the Election campaign trail, and for security, traffic was blocked, which created mayhem, so it took me twice as long to fight my way through the week-end traffic.
Fortunately for the Kitchen shop they were out on a job, the woman holding fort, rang one of the men, but I couldn\’t explain over the phone, and we agreed to contact when they were back later.
Back home, I let Marcela know what was happening, she wasn\’t having a much better day, our friend Pedro was supposed to be meeting her in the City at 1pm, to hand over some papers for the house, but he rang at the last minute to delay yet again, so Marcela cancelled as she had already been waiting two hours.
I then received a call from Marcela to say she was at the Kitchen Shop, so I locked up and shot up there, with my drawing showing the problems, and prints of the photos. I told John No.2, that I didn\’t believe that the counter top could be rectified in situ, and I no longer had any confidence in the company he had sub-contracted to do the work, however we have decided to give them a last chance at 10am in the morning, and if that doesn\’t work, we will have to look at other options.
We then went off for lunch, by which time it was 3pm, and returned straight home afterwards, but as it was now getting on, we called it a day!
An Englishman in Colombia 