FULLY TIGHTEN ALL THE BOLT

Thank you, welcome, and congratulations for choosing Nirvana for your complete home renovations. Relax. Nothing can possibly go wrong. And if it does, rest assured we will spare no effort to send people round to apologise profusely and explain that this really shouldn't have happened. And that it's never happened before & is extremely unlikely to happen again in the future. And to assure you, our valued customer, that we will find someone to blame by close of business. Because we care.

HOW DOES IT ALL WORK ?  ... Well, it's frighteningly simple:

The contract allows for one easy payment of all monies due. This is to be in the form of bank cheque, tax-franked Euros, or certified Krugerrand and is payable now.

 Thanks. Now we have that ugliness out of the way we can relax. Time to let you meet the team who are going to make your house renovation dreams come true !

DAVE will come round fifteen minutes late looking a little teary & design your kitchen while apologising for being late but his ex-wife is making his life a misery. He will persuade you that all the best people are putting frigs in their living rooms this year.

RENATA will redesign your kitchen, putting the frig back where it belongs & apologise for Dave's erratic behaviour, explaining that she finds it a bit ironic that his ex-wife couldn't deal with his experimentation vis a vis his sexual identity when she was the one who ran off and became a lesbian.

GONZO will supervise and install all flatpack items in your kitchen & bathroom. You will be required to leave the house during this operation as he will be working a straight thirty-two hour shift to get the job done before flying out to Uluru to complete the practical exercise component of his PhD in modern interpretive dance. Gonzo firmly believes that meth-amphetamine is not addictive & he should know, he's been taking every day for the past twenty-two years.

"Crouching" RON will be your plumber. He will install the dishwasher, water-heater, shower & a large hole in the wrong place in the kitchen. He will apologise for this, blaming the Mayan calender and Gonzo.

MELISSA from the office will come round to apologise for the hole in the kitchen wall above the stove, explaining that they could fix this hole but a plant would look really good right there.

BRIAN from Head Office will be around the day after to apologise for the poor quality of apologies so far, explaining that pretty much all the staff is new and haven't yet got a grasp of the house style. He will give you his personal mobile number which he's never given to any customer ever before and will insist that you ring him should anything else go amiss. He will then be seconded to a secret project in the Kimberlies which has never had, nor ever will have, mobile phone coverage. Sorry.

"Crouching" MICK, "Crouching" RON's plasterer mate will be round the day after that to fix the hole. And deposit what look to be about half a cubic metre of sawdust trampled throughout the house.

MELISSA will come back round to apologise for the sawdust. And in advance for BARRY THE TILER

BARRY THE TILER will tile your kitchen and bathroom perfectly. He will have one of those industrial radios with special protective bars to guard against falling bricks and concrete and steel beams. It is indestructible. It has two settings: Triple M & really really loud. BARRY THE TILER will share his most excellent cosmological insights, world view, and the somewhat redundant information that he's a bit deaf. Don't ask him about his pet rabbits.

MELISSA will come round the next day to remind you we did warn you not to mention the rabbits but you wouldn't listen. The whole business with the rabbits has been very upsetting for BARRY THE TILER and in fact all the staff here at Nirvana

TERRY and his apprentice MEPHISTO will be your painters. TERRY will do most of the fine work and stop frequently for cups of tea and to tell you about his planned trip to Provence with his wife which they've been planning now for years. MEPHISTO will clean up paint spills with the black cashmere scarf you carelessly left lying about in a drawer wrapped in tissue paper.

NINA, MELISSA'S replacement, will be round to apologise for TERRY and MEPHISTO and to get you to sign off on the job while apologising for the fact that MELISSA can't be there to apologise in person but she left the company yesterday to go run a writers festival in Bali. NINA will promise that if you sign off on the job she will definitely arrange to have all the doors that the carpet layers removed rehung by the end of the week tops. In addition, because you are possibly our most valued customer ever she will have a special present for you. It is a flat pack bookshelf with illustrated plans that look a bit like seating arrangements at the MCG or a Rorschach test, depending on which way you hold them up. There will be a single written instruction:

Fully tighten all the bolt.