Tommy rot...

TOMMY ROT! Oh, how well I remember that phrase from my childhood. Of course, I have no idea who Tommy was but his name was bellowed around our house at the slightest excuse, usually whenever I said something that wasn’t agreed with - even when factual and accurate… Oh happy days!

Talking of happy days, let’s get back to Wales shall we and my reasons for remembering Tommy or perhaps more pertinently his rot.

Of course Wales wasn’t all exploration, adventure and magic. There are always jobs to be done before the winter sets in and some of these jobs simply couldn’t be avoided no matter how hard I tried.

The discovery of wet rot in the main beams of my gates had, I hoped, been caught just in time. Unfortunately I had forgotten the words of Confucius when he say “Alway use bess possible filla fella” and I’d used some cheapo stuff than I’d hoped to get away with but hadn’t. The damn stuff simply wouldn’t dry, despite the three weeks it had been left to get itself into some sort of drying order. Pound shops! You simply can’t trust them. There was only one thing for it – I’d have to buy the expensive stuff that worked!

To be honest, some of the excavations I’d gouged into the wood of my gates were more caverns that holes. It really did look like only the best would do. As Frank, my old sometimes sparring partner and sometimes chum, had warned me when he saw those gates “look after them”, expressing the view that they would cost hundreds of pounds to replace. Of course he was right. There wouldn’t be much change from six or seven hundred pounds to replace the fifteen foot double barred gates, and I was damned if I was going to fork out all that money simply because of a couple of inches of soggy wood.

Purchasing the hardener and filler from the company who claim “it does exactly what it says on the can” was only difficult because it meant me parting with some of my fish and chip money. Luckily Wilkinson’s in Pwllheli had some which, to be honest, was a bit of a miracle as usually they have everything except what you want. Arriving back home I mixed the gloopy muck with a thin band of hardener and within minutes (yes minutes) the holes were filled, the filler hardened, shaped, sanded and I was ready to paint. It really did do exactly what it said on the tin.

It didn’t take long to rub down the gates and give them a lick of paint. As I painted I wondered who Tommy Rot was.

Perhaps it will and should always remain a mystery.