LOL, I think the windowcleaners doing their rounds, a younger lad and a somewhat older man, both got rather a shock, when I had to go out into the garden, and exit through the open french windows, whilst in somewhat unconventional attire.....
I heard 'mornin'', and replied myself, good morning to you too, but in a thick, muffled sort of tone, interspersed with a noise sounding like 'Hk-HEEERRRRHHHHHHH--PHTTT.....Hk-HEERRRRHHHH-PPPhhT-click', inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, click, whoosh, click, whoosh', pretty much like darth vader, minus the really low booming voice coming out of a speaker, as I had to speak from behind the gas mask and visor, a selfie (metadata stripped, so any pork, don't bother), giving a cheery 'good morning' from behind the whispering rush of breathable atmosphere and the Ft-Ka-SHHHH-PHHtK--oh, mornin' mate--- Ft-Ka-SHHHH-PHHHTkTK'
I don't think they were expecting that for some reason, with me walking out into the garden bearing a small, one-hand-portable bottle with very thick walls, a darkened, somewhat corroded label heavy with brown staining, and which had a teflon cap, teflon compression seal built into the bottom of the inside of the cap, and a heavy wrapping of teflon tape round the neck of the glass, held both at arms length, but with great care, in a hand buried beneath first elbow-length butyl rubber gauntlets, a pair of nitrile surgical gloves over the top, and finally thick fabric gloves over those, by a pale figure, all dressed in black, wearing a black, full-length leather trenchcoat tied at the waste with a leather sash, used like an apron.
Heading out with the bottle, doing some things they probably could only see as 'attending on a large glass flask full of liquid, having a drying tube in between the outlet, and a long horizontal column containing some grown bright, near-translucentish orange crystalline material,with a condenser on the end of that, capped with a glass plug made to match, and conspicuously large zones covered in teflon. Whilst seeing me having to pick a clip off the interface between horizontal column of searingly bright orange crystals, of a pumpkin sort of hue, being about to open the little heavyset, toughened bottle, but seeing people enter at the other end of the garden, having to make certain everything was closed, just as quickly, due to the contents of either bottle or column with its brilliant pumpkin orange glowy crystal formations, under it's chlorine gas and argon mixed atmosphere not being either of them anything one would wish to breath in the vapours of, not even in tiny traces.
And then seeing me have to pluck off and discard the friable chunky bits left of a stainless steel and a plastic glassware anchoring keck clip pair, the stainless etched, pitted, corroded and deeply stained, dark and blistered.
