Don’t know if you saw my Twitter message but all joking aside, I really do feel your pain on this one. My wife and have I have just had the karmic pleasure of watching our own jackass contractor have his rear end handed to him on a silver platter by a county court judge. We wait to see if we’ll get any money back but the satisfaction of watching incompetence put in its place was worth $500 all on its own.

My commiserations especially to Mrs C because I know how much worse this is for our ‘other halves’. My own wife had been looking forward to a housing revamp for months and the whole thing was ruined for her.

I may be preaching to the converted here but all I’ll say is, get as much as you can down in writing at this stage, even to the extent of confirming phone conversations with your own contractor by a follow-up letter.

Oh, and if it goes to court, don’t just turn off your cellphones beforehand but also make sure the alarm mode is turned off too. My whole life passed before my eyes when our judge was interrupted in a particularly technical line of questioning by Mrs Prest’s phone yelling “Oi, idiot: answer the phone…”

Kentucky Jim: Where’s Wally?

After an initial phase of uncertainty (Meski screamed whenever Wally tried to lick her face, which was often), the two have become partners in crime.

Meski drops the food, the Wonderdog eats it, and I don’t have to clean it up.

It’s a win-win-win. At least until the Wonderdog sat on the kid, which wasn’t the dealbreaker you’d think it was…

This woman was driving to the grocery store when her car died. Simply wouldn’t go anywhere, anyway. To top it off, her cell phone battery was dead. So she looked around for someplace that might offer assistance. Turns out, she was pulled over right in front of Heavenly Acres Mortuary.

This woman goes in and asks if she could make a phone call. The fellow who she talks to, he’s all decked out in his finest black suit, etc., and above all, he’s had it drilled into him over 25 years that HAM is, first and foremost, a classy service-oriented place. He offers to make the call for her, and asks who she would like him to call. The woman, all flustered by such chivalrous behavior, thinks for a moment then says yes, he could call her son-in-law.

The mortician dials, and when the SIL answers, he says, “My name is James, I work for Heavenly Acres Mortuary. We have your mother-in-law here.” There’s dead silence for a bit; the mortician says, “Hello? Did you understand me?”

Son-in-law answers forcefully, “Embalm, cremate and bury! We’ll take no chances with that one.”

I recommend wooden stakes and silver bullets in addition when attempting to exorcise contractors…