Beware of the builders!

Brethren, welcome to May, my birthday month! Please contact my editor in case you are wondering how to send me your gifts of live goats, cows, chicken and cash.

Do  you not  just love it when your friends move a step forward in life? If you have friends who are in the process of building their own home, please indulge them when they talk passionately about the project. 

Nod sympathetically when they tell you how they have just discovered their foreman has been conniving with some thuggish elements to steal their materials. Gasp along when they tell you how at the beginning, they would buy things at double the price because they simply had no idea. Forgive them when they cannot concentrate on talking to you because they are busy looking at paint samples and scrolling through Pinterest to get ideas.

What you will need most patience for, however, is the obsession with thinking about everything in terms of cement. When you suggest having a pizza, they remind you that it costs about the same as a bag of cement. 
A fun weekend somewhere? Enough cement to lay a foundation slab. A cup of coffee accompanied by a sweet pastry? Three bags of cement, for sure, counting the fuel used to get to the meeting place and back.

If your friend is the caring type, he or she will sit you down and do some quick calculations (over a bottle of water carried from home, because coffee/any drink= 1 bag cement) to show you how the rent you will have paid by the time this year ends would have been enough to construct your own home up to the second floor.

Cement can even improve your health. Imagine having to wake up at 5am to travel to your building site and unload cement bags from a lorry yourself to make sure nothing is stolen. That is the equivalent of a serious gym workout, the cost of which would equal, perhaps, five bags of cement. 

Enjoy your weekend, while I go check whether my local supermarket is accepting cement in place of money! 

[email protected]