Snag List Item #22,339, or (to Paraphrase Axel Rose), “What’s so civil about engineering, anyway?”

‘It is said, that statistically speaking, an infinite number of monkeys in a room messing about with typewriters would result in one having written Hamlet. What is often overlooked is, that you get one copy of Hamlet AND a room with an infinite quantity of monkey poo.’ – Aasvogel - Masturbations Vol. III.

1. First rule of Fluid Dynamics – NEVER talk about Fluid Dynamics.
2. Second Rule of Fluid Dynamics – Water flows downhill, for fucks sake…
3. Third Rule of Fluid Dynamics – Ignore Rules #1 and #2.

[Reader warning: much invective to follow]

It was a simple enough instruction to Sarath - Baas (Baas-Unnehi: an honorific for skilled workmen/artisan and therefore meaningless in the current context) and his whoop of liberated simians, whom I have mentioned previously, strategically shaved themselves so as to pass as construction workers of the homo sapiens kind. This in order to take on the job of building my pièce de résistance , the natural granite terrace that would effectively double that square area of the house, that was not garden. This was meant to be a long awaited marriage of The Aesthetic and The Practical. Finally after much tears, pressure and glaring silences, someone was to make an honest woman of The Aesthetic. I could talk the angles of approach I had in mind, of how the eye was to be drawn through the house out to the scene behind, of how the living space of the house was to not only be the square area contained within the walls, but that which was around it. My plans would routinely expand for this space. We could eat breakfast on it, jazz bands would throw gigs on it, we could lie on mats and watch shooting stars on it! This damned terrace would be the theatre that I would act MY LIFE on. I was going to notch up as many verbs as I legally could, right here, on the roughly cut granite of POTENTIAL.

Enter my construction workers and the MASONS from HELL. They confidently assure me that what I am desperately trying to explain the significance of, is a rather simple job which they have already done successfully for a recently satisfied client. So I should calm down. I am not swayed by their confidence on my project. I point out, that, philosophically speaking, Beauty, like Truth, lends existential purpose to itself, and my terrace would only serve its purpose by looking fabulous. That Nature abhors an ugly terrace; that there are circles of hell Dante carefully omitted to describe; where builders of such monstrosities would be forever rebuilding the same damn terrace over and over again while demons prod them with their fiery penises. And laugh at the tiny genitals of their charges. Genitals which stare out from the inside of small glass jars on tacky IKEA pinewood racks.

I walk them though the angles of the house pointing out that I want the stones laid in straight lines so that, see here, someone entering has their eye lead by the stones, which must be laid straight, OK? I go on to tell him of the man in Kandy, who in exchange for a small fortune is having has family gnaw the edges of the very stones we will be laying, till they are perfectly straight. Got it?

I move on with the requirements for proposal: Leave a slope away from the house when you build it, I said. Let it slope 4-6 inches across the 8 feet of it. Let the rain flow away from my house rather than collect in pools in it. This terrace is important. Every stone costs me money I haven’t even started earning yet and the peace of mind I have become accustomed to living without.

The lead Gorilla nods. Explains to me with the maximum of his newly evolved condescension, that I am clearly in need of something to take the edge of my OCD; that the project is not only possible, but it is simple. Work can start tomorrow. Apparently his band of banana rustling miscreants are back from the latest of a series of relatives’ funerals and are ready to take my money. Now would I go away please so he can get back to picking lice from his mate’s fur?

[Skip to the present day. Now that the damned slopes are built all wrong, I pace my hall like a madman on rainy nights waiting for that One Rain that is going to flood my hall, destroy all my yet unpaid for wooden doors, leaving me a gibbering mess. I must admit I am filled with a little historical skepticism. It was once taught to the young Aasvogel that the feats of his Sinhalese ancestors 1200 years ago was so impressive that they built a gigantic irrigation tank 5km long that has a constant slope of a couple of inches per kilometer. With a monotonous voice and the ever present threat of violence, the young Aasvogel was advised that this cannot be done today with existing technology, which has perplexed archeologists and engineers alike. Bollocks. Now, I don’t doubt that the agricultural civilization in the north a millennia ago possessed technology capable of such precision. After all this was before daytime reality TV, and people probably had more free time to figure out an elegant solution. I would like to assert that the only way the furry ancestors of Sarath-Baas and his rag-tag band of poo slingers would have built a 5 kilometer long artificial tank is by accident; the original request having been to build a fucking terrace. ]

I returned the next day. But of course, work has not started. I learn that when Gorillas say tomorrow, it turns out that there are CAVEATS. It reads like this: ‘We start work tomorrow, provided that
1. my workmen return from the binge-fest that their distant cousin’s mate’s funeral turned into;
2. Anything else I decide to prioritise instead;
3. I can still be bothered.’

But of course he expects to start tomorrow. For sure. I smile. Say a bad word to myself and get back into the car.

Days pass. Eventually even dead relatives are forgotten and the now sober and broke workers return. We are off! I come a few hours into the first day’s work. The primates appear to be UN-laying stones. Scraping off the cement and putting them back in the big pile in the corner. Naturally I am curious. Curious enough to launch the next Mass Cat Suicide. I ask a silly sounding question. Eventually, Gorilla #2 aka, ‘Surly’ responds. It seems they started laying the stones only to find that their imaginary line which was straight… WASN’T. Now I’ve seen lots of masonry sites in my career as a complete bloody civilian to civil engineering; and consistently I’ve noticed that the prevalent technology of the time is The Long Bit of Twine. I’ve heard that they even use it to build the straight bits of PARTICLE ACCELERATORS FOR FUCKS SAKE. So why don’t I see it used on my site? I take charge, call over Surly and instruct him to build with twine the grid that has been wanting. I leave, musing as I push the car into reverse, of what red hot metal rods could do to Gorilla behinds.

Success. The grid has worked. Stones are being placed in a pattern that excites the Aasvogel! Now, the concrete grout must go around the sides of my precious stones. I watch the first few being done. I see that the concrete is being smeared all over the stone face as my team clumsily work out their recently acquired opposable thumbs. I raise a small red flag: “That grout stuff on face: can you clean it off? It’ll ruin the stones.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll come off like a flakey prayer. We’ll sweep it off in fact, gratis. Ook.”

“Are you sure? I mean it’s cement, right? Same stuff that holds my walls together too, If I’m not mistaken.”

“Nah, it’ll come off.” This from the Aasvogel’s own father, a man who built hotels for a living not too long ago. Now, I like to take the advice of specialists, after all, what is the modern economy but about specialization? Today we’re long after the era when people used to complain about The Information Overload. That was when Megabytes was the standard, for crying out loud. Today, who can be the generalist?

Turns out I’m full of shit on that one too. Now my stones need acid etching. And not just vinegar. I have been directed to get my hands on nothing less than concentrated sulphuric acid, the scariest shit I’ve heard of, stuff which my chemistry teachers always hid from me. We’ve synthesized Nitro-Toluene (That one ‘Tri’ short of TNT, folks.) in the lab but they never ever let us have fun with the concentrated sulphuric Acid. The same stuff which I can buy over the counter in Pettah. I have to get the gorillas gloves, goggles, masks and also some clothes to cover their entire body. All it takes is a drop of their sweat to fall into the concentrated sulphuric acid and it will splatter everywhere maiming, blinding and killing. They only need to breathe the fumes to burn their respiratory system. I have to supervise every single movement they make. Now, on the few days I sleep, I have nightmares where I look away for a second, turn back to find one of them giving action to the thought: ‘maybe this would all go faster if I just splashed this everywhere’. I am grimly resolved, that if any die, I will simply dissolve what’s left of him in the vat of the acid. I’m not fucking explaining THIS one to the police.

As I try to piece together whatever shattered fragments of my sanity I can find, I realise what has transpired. My father, much like his idiotic son, likes to rely on specialists too. After all, that is how hotels get built you know, he relies on his subject matter experts for their recommendations. His specialization being, to carefully manage the many pieces of the complex project to completion.

Only today, on the matter of the sticky-to-stone-ness of concrete, he got his specialist advice from the same bloody gorilla.