Spanish Secrets: Step This Way
"Here in Spain, we say what a tonto! In English, what an idiot!'' Craig Briggs fails to take account of one small point when he goes to buy ladders in Galicia.
In preparation for painting the gable end of our house we decided to buy some proper ladders. We have a set of multi-purpose ladders that can be either step ladders or flipped open to extend to 4 metres, but that simply wouldn't be long enough for the job.
The main problem with ladders though is being ladders they tend to be quite long even if they're in two or more sections, so our first job was to go to the Renault dealership where we bought our little Megane and see how much a roof rack would cost.
Plan A.
We arrived at the dealership mid afternoon, which for Spain is about 6.00pm, to find the place virtually deserted. We did manage to find one person though and after explaining what we wanted he said he would get someone to phone us tomorrow with the price. We thought they might be quite expensive and had decided that if they were less than 100 euros we'd get them, but if they were more we'd try and get some ladders that would fit inside the car. The phone call came and the price was 116 euros
Plan B.
Having folded half the back seats down and the front passenger seat forward, the maximum load space enabling us to close the tailgate was 2 metres, I'd therefore concluded that if we could buy a ladder in three sections each of 2 metres the extended ladder would be big enough for the job.
Unfortunately we don't have an enormous out of town DIY warehouse. DIY shopping here involves visiting a number of small hardware shops armed with a pen and paper. Experience has taught us that if you don't know the name of the thingy you're wanting, drawing it is by far the easiest way to get what you're after. Fortunately in this instance we knew exactly what we wanted.
After visiting three other shops we found one that had the almost perfect set. They were 1.85m with three sections, giving us just over five and half metres in total.
We ordered them to be delivered to the shop the following day. The next day we collected them. They fitted perfectly into the back of the, car so all was well, or so we thought. O
Once back home I took the ladders out of the plastic and extended them to their limit. Somehow they didn't look any taller than the ladders we already had, and of course they weren't. What I'd failed to take into account was that each section needed to overlap another section, otherwise you simply have three ladders each 2 metres long. When overlapped the ladders turned out to be 4m 2 cm, only 2cm longer than the ladders we already had.
Here in Spain we say, what a tonto. In English, what an idiot!
Plan C.
Back to the hardware shop to exchange the ladders for longer ones and back to the Renault dealership to order the roof rack. This time we called when the parts manager was there. He tapped on the computer and told us the price, which was now only 96 euros.
To add insult to injury, when we called a couple of days later to collect the roof rack they had given us discount so we ended up paying 88 euros. If only they had told us that in the first place we could have saved an awful lot of time and trouble and a little bit of money.
email address
craigandmel@msn.com
