Two weird clients today. No, not weird actually –just typical. I’m seeing the pattern: Spoilt, demanding and always right. Just like teenagers. This morning it was a very grand house on a square in what I’m sure they call Islington but which I call Kings Cross. As usual I had to park a couple of streets away, feed the meter several quid for every hour and lug the gear.

He’s a senior editor of a national newspaper, she’s a writer, or so the Philippina nanny told me when they’d rushed off to work in twin black cabs and she was relaxing with a coffee while the kids wailed – ignored - in another room.

I’d got off to a bad start with him. He answered the door in a white towelling bathrobe looking bleary, and showed me out of a side door to get my stuff. He put it on the latch, but when I returned the door wouldn’t open. So I had to ring the front doorbell again. There was no answer, but when I came back five minutes later I got him again, and he was very huffy, insisting the door was on the latch. He yanked it to show me, at which point the bathrobe came open. He grabbed at it in a way that suggested he didn’t have anything else on, and when the door refused to budge he harrumphed and stomped of. Always right you see.

I had to power wash the York stone, which was a very messy job. The garden was a tiny courtyard dropping in two stages to a well alongside the house.
The well and steps seemed perfectly angled to send my jet of water blasting back over me, and the machine kept cutting out. I had to bang it repeatedly on the floor to get it going again. So I got soaked and filthy, but the dull grey stone was transformed to a lovely soft golden colour.

And it poured with rain all the time I was working. I had the cable and socket in a plastic bag but was ready for an electric shock at any time.

This afternoon it was off to Richmond to an American woman. On the phone she’d said she wanted her lawn re-seeded, but when I got there she said she wasn’t happy with its shape. It sagged in the middle, and what she wanted was a gentle mound. So it was off to Homebase for some topsoil. As I piled up the soil she’d come out and say “Higher” or “More rounded.” It had taken a couple of tons by the time she was satisfied. I only have a small van, and it was rearing up like frightened horse each time I loaded up. I had to pile bags on the passenger seat and under my feet to balance things out a bit.

I finished off just as the rain came down once again. As I left she asked me how long until the lawn would grow. I told her the seed should sprout in 10 to 14 days, and she looked disappointed. No, she looked more than disappointed; she looked like she was sure I was cheating her with inferior slow grass when she was paying for Speedy Green.

“Well,” she said, “I guess it better had.”

Demanding you see.