I like men who whistle while they work. I like them even better when they sing. Apart from providing an orchestral background to the hammering, and sawing, I believe that workmen who sing on the job - here we go - deliver a better standard of finish. Better than whom?

Better than workmen whose background noise consists of inane chatter on those many stations for morons, aimed at bored young ones on a supermarket check-out, chewing gum as they tot your purchases and throw their eyes to heaven, as you have not weighed the vegetable on the laser scale that even a moron could use. Which they demonstrate by going with bad grace to the scale and returning with a scowl.

There, having relieved myself of that rant, I feel well enough to sing the praises of the oven man. I had hired him from a small ad and he arrived in the middle of an apartment makeover.

During the previous few days, I excavated grime from walls, using a deck scrub with the kind of expertise that would deliver me a naval rating, were I young enough to entertain one.

In my labours, I discovered the original colour of the livingroom carpet by hiring an industrial vacuum cleaner that uses gallons of water and pints of detergent.

The mattresses, subject to much sagging, were supported by black plastic bags under the beds, containing mounds of unwashed and disintegrating sports kit (male). These were duly dumped, as were the heaps of crumpled jeans (male) at the bottom of the wardrobes. No consolation to know they might have kept Bangladeshis alive in the mountains.

I was perusing the piles of light porn magazines, retrieved from the top of the wardrobe, when oven man arrived.

A squat cheery Dub with a song in his heart, he opened the oven door, surveyed the hardened lava which decorated the innards and said, matter-of-factly: "Blokes is it, and mammy's boys? Never washed a cup at home."

From his modest van he unloaded a contraption that deserved an inventor's award - a compact canister of gas, connected by rubber pipe to iron jet rings of an old-style gas cooker - the lot engineered to burn off the congealed grime inside the cooker.

Having laid newspapers on the floor, his Da Vinci creation was placed inside the oven. As the jet rings spouted flames, the grime of years liquified and drained down the sides, collected by him in custom-made troughs of aluminium. Full marks for ingenuity.

As he worked, he delivered the operatic highlights of La Traviata, followed by the best of Luke Kelly. Raglan Road, in particular, had the gritty authenticity that only a Dubliner can deliver.

By the same token, and betraying my prejudices, I was surprised as he produced a chamois cloth to sparkle the cooker, showing no traces of the macho swagger which I expected.

So, the oven started a new life, nearly as clean as when it was bought. As he finished he quietly sang Scorn not his Simplicity.

Being a bit macho myself in those situations, I concealed my admiration for the singing and praised the new oven. He dismantled the real Da Vinci Code, and said he preferred cash only for the job.

As he gathered the newspapers, headlines were decipherable through the grim tales of diocesan sadism in boarding schools and bodies with holes in their heads in country roads.

I muttered some cliché about living every day as a bonus, which sparked a little tale on his behalf.

Now you've said it, he answered and gave me a parting fable.

Only for his mother, he might be a body on the road, or before the Redress Board, re-living horrors as a Daingean survivor. Not that many years ago, he said, in this very area, all changed now with new apartments, he planned with his mates to rob a shop.

He chickened out at the last moment, because - more than the cops - he feared his mother's hurt and anger if he was before the courts. "I was more afraid of de mudder than me mates or the cops."

The mates were about 12 years old. They were caught, went to Daingean and the start of the slippery slope that ended with alcoholism and suicide.

I could put names to them all, he said. I chose a different route. God knows why, he said, except for de mudder.

I don't remember him singing as he went out the door.