Mid Morning

[poliphilo]

Peter is here. The joiners are here. The window boys are here. The plumber is here. We're waiting for Khalid.

Peter is a tartar for health and safety. He's been telling the joiners off for leaving rubbish in the back yard and having boards lying around with nails in them pointing skywards.  He's a dragon, but he's our dragon. We give him coffee and Ailz chats to him about this,that and the other in her elder-sisterly way.

I've been watching the plumber at work. He's older than I am. He was holding a square of some soft stuff in his naked hand and warming it with a blowtorch. "That's moleskin," he says. "Really moleskin?" asks Josh the apprentice. "Yes, really moleskin. I haven't used it in twenty years. Let's see if I still know how". As far as I can make out the moleskin is a wadding he's using to pack the sawn off pipes before he puts a cap on them. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

You have lost me on the moleskin. Google tells me that it is a soft cloth -- "really moleskin" -- that is folded, oiled, and used to form molten lead into the proper shape for soldering.

Are these copper pipes?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I had to look it up too. I like it when I get a peek at the inner mysteries of a trade.

The pipes he was sealing are lead- yes, I know; we should have had them taken out decades ago- but this is an old house and the pipes were tucked away out of sight.

The new pipes will be copper.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Yes, the occult side of a craft fascinates me as well.

Thanks. I have no knowledge of lead pipe at all. Everything to which I have been exposed has been iron, copper or -- nowadays -- PVC.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lead pipe can poison you- or so they say- but I've been getting my drinking water through lead pipes for twenty five years now (without knowing it) and I'm not dead yet- so far as I can tell.