Become a decorator.
I have nothing against decorators. Indeed, I have relied upon them to paint, wallpaper, plaster and carpent my house from time to time. [Are you sure about this? Is there no other verb for what a carpenter does? I'll look it up: Ed] Standing well back, I admire the deft flicking of the brushes, the slopping on of paste, the confident selection of the right tool first time from a well stocked toolbox and the effortless swigging down of tea (three sugars, thanks love). They crouch down to snip off a millimetre of excess paper here and shave a flake off a sticking door there. And, sooner or later, they bring out ladders and planks and up they go into the dizzying heights above my head as they work on ceilings and that yawning gap on the wrong side of the bannisters on the first floor landing.
We have reached the crux of the matter. A decorator must be good on ladders. He must be able to stand reaching up with both hands free, balancing perilously on the top step of the ladder, blithely ignoring the chasm beneath. His hand remains steady and his feet firmly in place. Looking down presents no difficulty. His vision does not swim, nor is he gripped by visions of trembling, losing his balance, and toppling off the step to plunge, limbs flailing, to the unforgiving floor.
If he has an assistant, that worthy is not to be found providing a heavy boot on the bottom tread to guarantee stability and the top of a head to be clutched for support. He will be elsewhere, mixing the paint, fetching up the tea (those biscuits were lovely, thanks again) or idling half in, half out of the van with the radio on and a blissful fag on the go. Untroubled by the prospect of a future poised above stairwells or leaning precariously out of windows, he contemplates nothing more bothersome than the runners in the 2:35 at Catterick.
This is where decorating and I part company. Up those ladders I refuse to go. More than two steps high, my hands falter, legs begin shaking and strange notions enter the brain. All my attention is given to remaining in place. Any movement, such as the extension of the arm to paint a wall, is forbidden; it would ruin my balance and all would be lost. Merely contemplating going higher induces a state of mild panic in which freezing in place is the only solution until at last one can stretch a foot backwards to return to normality on the lower rungs.
For similar reasons I have declined to become a circus trapeze or high wire artist, have allowed others to claim prime contracts in the demolition of industrial chimneys and, with regret, have never gone into mountaineering. These careers are somewhat precarious, in more than one sense. Decorating, however, is solid and can be done without excessive travelling or upfront financial investment (We've all got some old paint brushes in the garage, after all, it only needs a bit of turps to get them fairly usable). It is easy to begin - one need but print up a few flyers and pop them through one's neighbours' letter-boxes, and then sit back and wait for the phone to ring. Just up my street is a decorator and he is very much in demand. I could take on the clients he is too busy to oblige, couldn't I? And I'd be cheaper.
So I could easily have this on my bucket list of things to do, if it were not for the blasted ladders. There is no getting around it. Decorating is for others and I must resolutely refuse to be tempted into it, no matter how many offers to print really cheap flyers come my way.
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