She's got more balls than me!

 

My wife Denise crawling between the inner and outer glass roofs of what was, 

in the 1990's, my studio in the UK.

The above picture shows that spectacular roof after ten years of restoration. 

I was up at the first light of dawn this morning working on the roof of the studio. The roof is flat concrete and nowhere near as spectacular as the roof of what was our studio in the UK. Before I climbed the ladder, I told Denise, if anyone's looking for me, I'm up on the roof. Those words brought to mind many Burnett family stories about working on roofs.

While Denise was perched fifty feet above the studio floor, cleaning 120 years of soot that had accumulated between the inner and outer glass roof shown above, the delivery man came with our gas bottles. He looked aloft in amazement and said, "Rog, there's someone up in your roof". When I told him it's only the wife, he responded, "She's got more balls than me!"

In the early years of the last century, a Yorkshire newspaper sent a reporter to interview one of my great aunts on her 100th birthday. On arriving he found the front door of her house open. He called out Mrs. Burnett and got the answer, "I'm up here". Thinking that the poor old dear was bedridden, he climbed the stairs only to find her bed empty. He called out again and this time realised that the response, "I'm up here", came from outside. On going into the street he looked up. And there she was, on the roof with a bucket of mortar pointing the chimney!

He must have also echoed the words: She's got more balls than me!