Ken, the Cumbrian Handyman

One of the biggest struggles in moving to Maryport is transitioning from home owners to renters. Back home, if something broke, wore out, or needed to be changed, we fixed it ourselves. (Of course, by “we,” I mean Matt.) The lag time between need and excecution was always, at most, two or three days. If the garbage disposal broke, for example, Matt was at Home Depot the next day buying a replacement, and then he’d install it on the weekend. Simple as that.

Now, as renters, we have to deal with something completely foreign to us…. The Handyman.

Mark, our landlord, lives fairly far away from Maryport. In his place, he’s hired Ken the Cumbrian Handyman to take care of all of the projects around the house that need fixing. So, whenever we notice something around here that needs to be worked on, we have to go through Ken.

This is a really old house, and there are a lot of things that need to be worked on. Ergo, we see a lot of Ken.

We met Ken on the very first night we moved to Maryport. It was 8 in the evening, and Matt, Frankie, and I had just driven five hours up from Bristol. We were just getting ready to put Frankie to bed when Ken decided to pop by. A few weeks have passed and my memory is a little fuzzy on why exactly he decided to stop by. What I can definitively say, though, is that he was here for at least an hour, and he left without actually working on anything. Ken basically just breezed over to the house, opened the door with his key, and strolled right in.

At this first meeting, Ken introduced himself, started talking, and never really stopped until he finally decided to leave. Ken is a real presence in a house. He’s not an especially big guy, but he stands uncomfortably close when he talks to you, and speaks at about twice the volume of a normal person. As he walked out the door, he shouted, “Don’t worry! You’ll be seeing a lot of me!” Of course, Ken also has a thick, almost impossible-to-decipher accent, so this phrase sounded more like, “Duntcha wor. Ye’ll a-be-seein a lo’ morra meh!”

This meant one of two things, neither of which appealed to me, and both of which ended up being true:

1) We’ll be seeing a lot more of him because there are tons of things around here that tend to break down

2) We’ll be seeing a lot more of him because he plans on popping by constantly

One of the most disorienting things about moving to a small town in another country is that you suddenly have no idea how to gage the behavior of the people that you meet. Matt and I find ourselves constantly wondering what constitutes “normal” around here. There’s really no way of knowing if the things we find unusual about the people we meet are actually odd, or just English. We don’t really know what the acceptable standards of behavior are for England, or even for small-town life, for that matter. Both of those things are totally new to us, and we’re constantly having to ask ourselves, “Is it just me, or did that seem weird?”

With Ken, this is a big problem.

Ken is an over-the-top, eccentric character. He seems plucked right from some sort of Fawlty-Towers-esque sitcom. He’s the British Dwane F. Schneider.

That might seem like a charming comparison, but seriously… Imagine that you actually had to interact with Dwane F. Schneider. The fun wears off pretty quickly.

He’s loud, hard to understand, and treats the house like he’s the owner, not the handyman. Since that first night, he’s consistently popped by unannounced, just letting himself in with his key. Actually, since we’ve moved in, Ken’s stopped by almost every day. The only days that he hasn’t come by the house are the days in which we’ve specifically asked him to come over and fix something. On those days, he never shows up, and never calls or explains his absence. He’ll just magically appear in the kitchen two days later, telling me to make him a cup of coffee. And fixing nothing.

So, the problem has been... How do you find a balance between acceptable American standards of behavior, and what's appropriate here in Maryport? Is it acceptable to take two weeks to fix a shower out here? Is the pop-in visit normal? Is it considered ok to walk into someone else's home without calling? Are we the ones that have inappropriate expectations?

It's so frustrating, especially when moving to a new community and not wanting to try our best to fit in.

Mostly, I’ve started to realize that Ken’s personality and my personality create a very, very, bad dynamic. He’s kind of a blowhard, and I’m outwardly too polite to confront him on his behavior. Outside, I’m smiling but inside I’m seething. The other day, he came over and showed me off-color jokes that someone had texted to his cell phone. One was a racist joke about President Obama, and the other was about a “retard sex maniac.” Then, he pulled out a sandwich, grabbed a plate from the cupboard, and proceeded to eat lunch at my kitchen table. When he was done, he left all of his trash behind for me to clean up. (He seems to think that, as the lady of the house, it’s my job to serve him?)

It made me so angry, that I wanted to punch someone. But I didn’t. And I’m really mad at myself for not being more forceful with him. But, I kept thinking that I didn’t want to offend this man… After all, he claims to be the “King of Maryport.” Who am I to argue with small-town royalty?

It’s clear now, though, that I’m going to have to start building some stronger boundaries with Ken. It’s in my nature to be nice and accommodating, but there’s a limit. And he’s reached it.