Lee and Dean: Interview with Lee and Dean

19 March 2018

You guys were at school together. Can you remember the first time you met?

Lee: Yeah. You’d wet yourself.

Dean: I was just gonna say that.

Lee: It was in art class.

Dean: Which I used to do quite a lot. I sometimes got really distressed by the colours.

Lee: It’s ochre. Always sent him nuts.

Dean: It was also the ovens for the clay. I just really don’t like concentrated heat.

Lee: He can’t go near a microwave oven or nothing like that. If we go to Pizza Express, we have to sit as far away from the oven as possible. That sets him off.

Dean: So when I pissed myself, the teacher didn’t want to come near me, and she’d used up all her rubber gloves and that.

Lee: So I had to go and get a few coats from the cloakroom and soak it up. And then I just stayed with him. He wept for about two hours.

 

What were you both like at school?

Dean: He was a proper little shit.

Lee: I was always winding people up.

Dean: He was a little fucker. That’s what the head teacher used to call him. She used to say “That little fucker.” She thought we couldn’t hear, but we could hear, because we were always outside her office.

Lee: I used to cut people’s artwork up for a laugh. No-one else found it funny.

Dean: It was beautiful. You used to make a collage out of it. It was taking art and making new art, I think there’s something nice about that.

Lee: I s’pose it was sort of upcycling.

 

And what were you like, Dean?

Dean: I was quite sensitive. I used to get a bit worried by stuff.

Lee: Sometimes I’d just sit and hold his hand in my hand, d’you know what I mean? Not bent or nothing, just supportive.

Dean: The teacher used to say to you “Go and sort Dean out, I ain’t looking after him.

Lee: Yeah, that would be my job. I was getting to his house early in the morning and making his packed lunch. He struggled. And his dad wasn’t interested. So I’d make him his packed lunch and take him in to school. He used to ride on the back of my bike. He used to hug me really hard, I’d say “Don’t squeeze so hard,” and he’d say “I’m scared.”

 

How did you end up going into business together?

Dean: My nan was a builder, and I used to do work experience with her.

Lee: You know that block of flats in Vauxhall? His nan done the lot. Plumbing, all of it. Single-handedly. It took her 27 years.

Dean: No training, nothing. But she just done it. She said “That’s what you did in those days. You just had to graft.” I went to careers advice, and the guy told me he didn’t think I could do anything, and my nan was giving it up, and she was giving away a cement mixer, and we just thought we’d have a go at it. It was a disaster to begin with.

Lee: First thing we done, we put a felt roof on a shed. It took us a fortnight, and even then we fucked it up. But you learn, don’t you?

Dean: And to be fair, you can learn most stuff off YouTube. If you’re not sure how to do stuff like electrical work, most of it’s on YouTube.

Lee: The amount of times you ended up in hospital. The amount of shocks you got!

Dean: Yeah, it’d be like “Dean’s flying across the room again!” There would be a flash of light, and bang, I’d be across the room.

 

What would you say your strengths are, as builders?

Lee: Client first!

Dean: We’re very client focussed. The aftercare package is very important to us. Especially when we need to collect the last bit of money.

Lee: We make sure we’re there on time, don’t we. The client enjoys that.

Dean: And you always say to me “Dean, top button.”

Lee: They appreciate smartness, they don’t like messy people.

Dean: A lot of builders turn up in messy stuff, dirty stuff. That top button helps get the bill settled.

 

You both work together and live together. Do you ever argue?

Lee: Yeah, normally over word searches, something like that. You get a lot of it wrong, don’t you?

Dean: Yeah, sometimes I see words where there aren’t words. And I circle them anyway. And that really winds you up, doesn’t it?

Lee: There was one in the middle recently, and you said “That says ‘Jetstream’.” And I said “No it doesn’t. It’s XPPXKT.”

Dean: To me, it said ‘Jetstream’.

Lee: And then he’ll go and sulk in his room. He’ll just sit in there.

Dean: What he does, when he’s in a mood, he won’t say anything, I’ll just go to bed, and I’ll hear “Whack! Whack! Whack!” I’ll come in the next morning, and he’s taken down the wall between the kitchen and the lounge. And it’s sagging because it’s a supporting wall.

Lee: I’d rather take it out the wall than his nut.

Dean: And then he’s fine, he’s made breakfast, he’s got a pan on the go, and he’s like “One or two rashers, Dean?”

 

You’ve also got quite an unusual hobby together – tell me a bit about that.

Lee: The old bark rubbing! We done quite a few hobbies over the years. We had a go at being farriers. Then we done some equine dentistry, that didn’t work out, so we left that.

Dean: You would not believe how complicated a horse’s gob is, I tell you. They’ve got at least four times as many teeth as we do.

Lee: So we knocked that on the head. And on the way home, do you remember, we just saw a load of trees. And there was a couple of people, and I said “Oh look at that, there’s a geezer pissing up against a tree,” and we went over, and he was just rubbing. And I thought “That’s interesting.

Dean: So we got talking to him. And that was Derek Steps. He’s very well known in the community.

Lee: He’s like the best rubber there is. He uses the twist and burn technique.

Dean: And the double crayon.

Lee: I’ve never seen nothing like it. And here’s the weird thing: He’s deaf, dumb and blind. He’s got a guide with him, hasn’t he?

Dean: And he doesn’t speak a word of English. And he’s English!

Lee: It’s just noises that come out.

Dean: But it’s a funny thing, you can sort of understand him. He’s like a Tellytubby.

 

And Dean, you’re something of a poet. What do you get out of writing poetry?

Dean: Well, it’s like Lee has always said to me, I’m quite cerebral. I’ve got a lot of things that I want to say, and I’ve tried saying them, and the words just come out wrong. And I had a teacher at school, and she said “Why don’t you start writing it down?” And that’s what I did. I started doing poems. I put my poems into two categories: The ones that rhyme, and the ones that don’t rhyme. They’re very distinctive, especially the ones that don’t rhyme. They’re more free-forming.

 

Lee, what do you think of his poetry?

Lee: Beautiful. I really like it. You went through a stage of just writing two-word poems, didn’t you?

Dean: Yeah. ‘Flat foot’. Do you remember that one?

Lee: Yeah. I said “Read it out!” and he went “Flat foot.”

Dean: And he was in tears.

Lee: I had to go for a drive to gather myself, didn’t I? It said so little, and yet it said so much.

 

Lee, what are the best and worst things about Dean?

Lee: The best thing is his gentleness. With him, his emotions are so open. He’s an open book. He’ll tell me things he won’t tell anyone else. I like that. I like the honesty. The worst? His urine stinks. It’s really bad. You’ve had bladder problems for ages, haven’t you?

Dean: I’ve been on medication for years.

Lee: Sometimes it looks like tea. It’s really bad.

 

Dean, same question about Lee…

Dean: I’ll do the worst thing about you first of all. It’s gonna sound funny and that, but I really don’t like the way you walk.

Lee: Right. Okay. Sorry. You haven’t said that before.

Dean: Yeah, it’s just now I’m thinking about it. It’s just the way you hold yourself and carry yourself.

Lee: Is that why you always walk in front of me?

Dean: Yeah. Sorry. And the best thing about you is that you’re probably the best bloke I know.

Lee: Aww. Thank you.

 

Where do you see yourselves in ten years’ time?

Dean: Shall we say it at the same time?

Lee: Yeah.

Together: One… two… three…

Dean: Together.

Lee: Married with kids.

[Pause]

Lee: We’ll still see loads of each other…

Dean: Yeah, we’ll still live together.

Lee: Well, you’ll probably have your own gaff by then.

Dean: Yeah… yeah, course.

Lee: Anyway, I might be dead by then. I’ve got an enlarged liver.