I hate heights. Briefly, as a young man, I had no fear of them. I would happily get onto the roof, trailing cable from my valve radio and attach it to the TV aerial so I could pick up Radio Hauraki from Feilding in the daytime. The TV went out just as Dad was settling in after a hard day’s farming to watch the cricket. The screen just went dead. There might have been smoke. There would be no TV for anyone until the repairman came. The teenage me slipped outside, swiftly retrieved the cable and skulked off to my room to resume brooding about the terrible world full of terrible people.
By the time I was 25, I had escaped death in cars, on motorbikes, on mountains and in most of Wellington's public bars. My brain was as fully formed as it was ever going to get and I was no longer so bold; more conscious of what you could do to your neck if you came off a roof.
So here I am, decades later, spending the best days of this magnificent summer painting our high roof and, whenever I stop to reflect on what I'm doing, hating it. I am doing this because it very much needs to be painted and the days when you could just get some brave young guy to whip up there and get it done are gone.
This is a good thing, I have to concede. Those looser days are gone. Even though those high-living guys are naturals up there, modern safety practices are there for those moments when a natural loses his footing. You can’t say those moments don't happen.
Last time, last house, I found a painter in the classifieds. His name was Hussein. He was from Iraq, and you never met a more obliging guy. Sure, he could do it, he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. Up he went, all over the roof, quick and agile as a monkey.
