Sometimes you just don’t know whether to laugh or cry!

I live in a large house converted into flats and I am on the second floor. Over a year ago, water burst through the ceiling in the stairwell and after many furtive attempts the management company concluded that the water was coming in through the roof. It was concluded that scaffolding was needed to assess the roof and finally repair it.

This morning, the rep from the management company called to confirm their visit this coming Friday. He said he was bringing some a builder and they would be climbing the scaffolding up to the roof. I said I hoped that the scaffolding would be up by then as we are quite high up and it would take time to put it up.

He insisted the scaffolding was already up and asked me to check through my lounge window. I checked – no sign of any scaffolding around our building. However I happened to look out of the window to the right and there I saw the “missing” scaffolding. It had been put up against the wrong building!

It was one of those surreal moments – I just didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!

I informed the agent on the phone and a long silence followed. He was as lost for words as I was. Anyway, he went off to find out what had gone wrong and how the situation could be remedied by Friday. It is after all a long way to jump from one building to another, as the photo below shows.

After I hung up the phone, I couldn’t contain myself anymore and simply laughed and laughed for ages. It was probably the most I have laughed for a long time.

So the learning is this – always see the humourous side to any adverse event. Life is too short to take seriously. Let it all out and laugh as much as you can – just make sure you are on your own 🙂