BEST NOT TO SAY

Friend Rod who lives in the street up back from our property is painting his house including the roof.

Rod rented our house while we were overseas for a couple of years and looked after it well.

I was pleased when he found a house to buy nearby.

Rod is a couple of years older than me chronologically but seems a couple of decades older than me in attitudes. He is a bit of a fuss-pot and was telling me that: he was scared of getting up on the ladder; frightened of the scaffolding; and terrified of getting on the roof.

What to say?

Heights haven't ever worried me in the past and I don't really understand other people's fear.

The Old Girl and I have parachuted, parapented, hang-glided, mountaneered and sat on ledges with our feet dangling. 

Anyway, I went around to Rod's place last week and helped him to prime the outside of the house, concentrating on the eaves and hard to reach places at the top of the scaffold.

Over the last weekend, starting from Thursday I had a very debilitating migraine so didn't get a chance to go around to see how he was getting on. The funny thing was though that on the weekend I had a very strange dream.

I dreamt that Rod was flying to Australia or somewhere but not in an airplane, no, he had developed a way to fly on a motorbike! It was a dream after all. I was in a small plane beside him and after take-off I was watching him 'flying' along but he overcompensated his height trajectory and headed up at too high an angle and the bike sort of slipped backwards and down. He fell off and plummeted to the ground. Somehow I got the plane I was in to land and rushed to see him. He was in a hospital at this stage, in bed and thankfully alive. I woke up.

This dream concerned me and so on Sunday I called around but Rod and his wife were away. I checked around the side of the house and the wall had been painted and there were no obvious signs of a fall.

Today (Tuesday) I called around again and Rod was on the roof finishing off the last bits of roofing iron. Luckily the pitch of this roof is gentle and he had been able to paint it OK but he was very visibly relieved to declare it finished.

I didn't tell him about my dream.