Wednesday 19 March 2014

Always pay your marble bills


More bloody marble. This bit is a little too large to pop into the back of the car, so I will have to go back to the Forest in a truck to collect it - when I have finished chopping up the other bit of white bloody marble.

It is very expensive, of course, but almost worthless when it is sitting as part of a mountain in Italy, waiting to be pulled out. The more it is handled (and it takes some handling) the more valuable it becomes, so by the time I have finished with it, you can stick an extra few zeros on to the end of the bill.

The man who imported it goes to Italy all the time, and he told me a few stories about the world of marble which, as you might imagine, is completely controlled by Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, the Sopranos and all the other personas in those dramas. You don't expect to get a better deal by going to a quarry just down the road from the other.

Some years ago, a big London marble dealer was asked - very politely - to settle his outstanding account with an Italian quarry, to whom he owed quite a lot over a period of time. He ignored the final demand.

Then he went back to Italy to visit some more quarries (big mistake) and his brakes failed on a mountain pass, sending him and his car over the edge.

When the news of this accident arrived in England, everyone in the marble world here began to check all their invoices to make sure they had not forgot to pay one of them through some simple, clerical oversight. They were all paid within 24 hours, and then paid promptly thereafter.

16 comments:

  1. It saves on horses heads, I suppose.

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  2. I used to knock about with a stone mason. His stone came wrapped up in oily sacking. He said it prevents the stone becoming brittle. Yes he got his stone from a merchant in the UK. He had an Italian name though.

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    1. Amazing - I have spent all these years trying to keep any trace of oil away from stone. No wonder all the stone I have ever worked has been so brittle. Pisani.

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  3. So that's why the weaver was hanged in his yarn.

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  4. As long as I don't lose my marbles, I will pay them.

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    1. Oh Tom, if you speak of Thomas Bruce, 7.Earl of Elgin: he was here (and if you now read again my first remark very worried: his picture was here, in a Berlin exhibition - and then the owner in Scotland wanted it back earlier, because he celebrated his 90th (?) birthday). So the Earl left a gap.

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    2. It wasn't the first gap he has left.

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  5. I am so impressed by this talent of yours Tom. What would it take to get you to come to Illinois and create lovely stone sculptures for our Poor Farm? Lots of cash I suppose. Hmm...what can I sell?

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    1. You suppose right, Donna. Better start saving - I'm starting to get old.

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  6. This story makes a film in itself Tom. It sure makes the fiasco of the Budget fade into insignificance.

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    1. A penny off a pint of beer. That means I will save a whopping 2.5 pence per night.

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  7. Best to deal with non-Italian middle man, whatever the mark up....

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    1. Same with drug dealers. You do not want to deal with the bloke from Columbia.

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