Major Infarction And General Anaesthetic

So my poorly hot water heater was given its pre-op clean Tuesday evening. The dust was scrubbed off. The old bottles of Domestos and Oilatum were removed from the top. The blood spatter patterns were removed from the sides (don’t ask). All in preparation for Dr Plumb to delve into its coppery innards Wednesday morning.

I told work I’d be in late. I needed to be on hand to wipe my water heater’s brow and whisper reassurances into its metallic ears as the engineer invaded it’s inner sanctum with a screwdriver and a rolled up copy of The Sun.

As it was the operation was cancelled. After an hour of fruitless waiting I rang Sureway to be told by the receptionist that Dr Plumb’s previous patient was currently dying on an operating table somewhere in Suburbville and would take a lot longer to resuscitate. I couldn’t afford to lose yet more time at work so had to reschedule the op for the next day. Thursday at 4pm.

Typical bloody NHS.

As it was the Dr Fixit who attended on Thursday was worth the wait. If we were fearing a greasy-handed butcher who would leave foreign objects afloat in my water heater’s tender abdomen (I believe it’s called retention) I was wrong. We had a lovely young doctor who prepped and cleaned the operating table beforehand and even swept up the rusty entrails afterwards too. It was like the NHS had been unable to attend and had sent BUPA instead.

He quickly ascertained the possible sources of the problem: either a faulty valve (replacement would be £170 – may as well get a new water heater if this was the case) or a worn diaphragm.

It proved to be the latter. Much cheaper to replace and very reassuring to know that my water heater has been indulging in safe sex for all these years without me knowing about it. Though it does explain why our shower unit always looks so perky in the mornings.

We now have the pitter-patter of hot water running throughout the house once more. Father and water heater are both doing well.

Thank you all for your get well cards, your flowers and your chocolates. They were much appreciated though very much more imagined.

I can now get myself up to my neck in hot water once again (in fact I must remember to tell this to my wife: she’ll be thrilled).

Halloween Boiler

I say “boiler” but actually the Sureway Heating operative I spoke to on the telephone rather tartly informed me that what I actually have is a water heater not a boiler.

Whatever it is the damn things is haunted or possessed or has had a section of its metallic intestines pulled through into an inter-dimensional wormhole because it is just not functioning as it should.

In fact it isn’t even functioning as the laws of physics say it should and, you have to admit, it’s got to have a hefty demon on its shoulders to mess with Professor Brian Cox.

Now, I’m no heating / plumbing engineer, but I know that basically what I have in the bathroom is a big heater thing that heats up the hot water passing through it and then transports it to various outlets around the house via a couple of pipes. We don’t have many outlets. Just two sets in the bathroom and one set downstairs. I live in a 3 bedroomed semi not Longleat House after all.

So. In simple terms:

Heater >> short expanse of pipework >> taps.

An elegant little flowchart. Not much room for error.

And yet things are not right.

We have hot water upstairs. The pilot light is on. The water heater blazes inside like a miniature furnace whenever the hot taps are turned to the full-on position.

But we have no hot water downstairs. None at all. The hot tap is turned on, the heater blazes, water gushes through the pipes but it ain’t (even half) hot (mum). It’s stone cold.

How can this be? How can we have hot water upstairs but not downstairs when all the pipes are fed from the same heater? It’s not like the pipes downstairs are several kilometres longer than the ones upstairs to give the water time to cool down. They don’t divert our water through Siberia or Antarctica on its way to the kitchen tap. Where is our hot water going?

The only change of circumstance that has occurred recently has been the arrival of a new bunch of students next door but they look rather sweet and not the type to siphon of hot water illegally from their neighbours. Borrow a couple of herbal tea bags, yes. Nick hot water, no. And besides. As we all know, students and baths / washing up / clothes washing do not mix. The only thing they know to do with hot water is to shove it into a Pot Noodle. And there isn’t a Pot Noodle hunger big enough to warrant the amount of hot water that has gone missing from my house.

So I’ve rung the experts. The guy I spoke to sounded a little perturbed by the problem and is going to send his best man out this week to take a look at it. OK. OK. He’s going to send a man out to look at it. And then we shall see what we shall see.

In the meantime, I’m breaking out the garlic and the holy water and calling a priest.

Our hot water heater has plainly got bad juju.

Christine

As a rule we don’t name our vehicles in my household. They merely get referred to as “the car” or “the bike”. After all it is impossible to get them confused so why bother being more personal?

“The car”, however, has now earnt the moniker “Christine”.

Yes, as in the film.

Karen, the kids and I were on holiday last week. We had lot of plans to visit people and places. To see the country. To travel. The weather was set to be good. Things were looking up. We just had to get the car through the MOT.

Christine decided to malfunction the day before the MOT. A big overheating problem. However, we managed to limp her to the Peugeot garage for her MOT.

They rang back fairly quickly. The head gasket had “gone”. I don’t know where it had gone, ‘cos it was there last time we looked, but it had gone.

Annoyingly, if the car had fully broken down amid smoke and bits of spewed metal, my wife would have called out the AA who, bound by the terms of the insurance agreement my wife has with them, would have replaced the head gasket and carried out all repairs at no cost to us.

But because the damn thing hadn’t the grace to breakdown properly and we’d got it to the garage we were now liable for all repairs.

Although I wasn’t there, Christine’s headlights glowed evilly red as the garage hit us with their quote to do the work.

£1800.

1800 effing £!

That’s a serious dent in our savings. In the end, after much deliberation – might it be worth just buying a new car? – we decided to get other quotes and go for a repair. We just can’t afford to tie up thousands of pounds in a new car until Tom is at school and Karen is working full-time again.

So we found another garage. A reputable, well recommended one. He could do the job for £900. Only thing is he couldn’t start until the penultimate day of our holiday and we wouldn’t have the car back until the day we were all due to return to work / school.

We had no option. So all our travel plans were scuppered. No visiting of friends. No drives around the country. Christine sat on our drive exuding brimstone from her exhaust and revving her engine in praise of Satan for much of our holiday week until we finally offloaded her onto the mechanic last Thursday.

We should have got her back on Monday but the repair took longer. Something about a fan blade shearing off and taking out the radiator grills. I’m guessing she was trying to snuff out one of the grease monkeys who were working on her...

So Karen, who needs the car to get to and from work, had to ring her employers to say she couldn’t make it in. This meant taking an unpaid day off. That’s us £50 down already before we even pay the garage.

We finally got the car back yesterday afternoon (so another day off unpaid for Karen) but... and here’s the rub. The car now has to be re-MOT’d. The mechanic can’t do that. We have to take her elsewhere. That’s a third day at home for my wife. We are now £150 down this month on top of the repair bill.

Christine meanwhile was writing “666 in clover” in engine oil all over the floor of the mechanic’s garage and buggering a virgin over the pile of tyres the mechanic keeps at the back of his repair bay.

Today the position is this: we’ve managed to get her into another garage today for an emergency post-repair MOT at midday. Should she pass we’re all sorted and only a grand down. If not then we will be throwing more money after bad...

Did I say bad? Harrumph. I’m calling a priest. That car needs some serious exorcising.

You Plumb!

Do people not want work? With the country selling its kidneys for rent money, do people not want to earn a bit of cash?

We have a small list of plumbing jobs in my house. Nothing too onerous: a couple of taps that don’t work properly, a leaky sink and a leaky shower, a wonky shower head that refuses to stay in position (so one must shower doing the Hitler salute to keep it over one’s head)... all stuff that a good plumber could sort out in an hour or two. A nice little earner in fact.

But do you think I can commission someone to do the work?!

The first thing I did was to pose the question on my work’s intranet: can anybody recommend a good, reasonably priced plumber?

The response to this was good. Three recommendations plopped into my inbox. Three likely lads championed by satisfied customers.

I rang all of them. All bar one answered and set a time to come round the ol’ gaffe last weekend, take a look and give a quote. I left a phone message with the third and left it at that.

The weekend came but the two plumbers didn’t. No show. Bleeding great. The third one, however, picked up his phone message and rang me back. This looked more promising. He attended within the hour, quoted £80 (I bit his hand off) and said he’d formalize the quote on Monday and get in touch to make arrangements to come and do the job.

Monday came and went. Nothing. Nadda.

OK. Maybe he was busy. Had a rush job on. A little old lady with her rheumatoid arthritic toe jammed up her combi tap. These things happen.

A week later though and the plumber drought continues. Not a sign. Not a dickie-bird. And I’m not sure I can be bothered to chase any of these jokers up.

If they don’t want the work I’m not sure I want to give them my money in the first place.

They can all go and shove their heads down the nearest toilet. After all, some might say that is an occupational hazard (when they actually do their jobs, that is).

Double Acts

Two workmen engaged on a job will get it completed in half the time, right?

Wrong.

I know this for a fact because, in my normal line of duty, I have had copious experience of dealing with both the lone contractor and the contractor who brings his mate along to help.

The lone contractor is your friend. Fact. He’s on his own, he wants to get the job done as quickly as possible and get out of your hair with the minimum of fuss and mess. Which is exactly what you want too. Perfect. I feel an inordinate sense of relief when a lone contractor turns up.

Not so when “the comedy duo” turn up.

You see a workman and a workman’s mate will always see themselves as a comedy double act. A Bit Of Fry And Laurie. Baddiel and Skinner. Morecombe and Wise if they’re both of the older generation. Never French and Saunders for some reason – but maybe that’s a gender thing.

And they will see it as their sole purpose in life to entertain you and whoever is hanging around in the office for the duration of their visit. The job will take twice as long to complete because they will inevitably distract each other. They can’t help it.

The main workman will be the guy actually doing the job while his mate will merely sit nearby, pass the occasional adjustable spanner and be the fall-guy for all the comedy gold that his partner is endlessly spouting.

And they’ll have a pre-prepared script. Little stock phrases that they’ll wheel out for the benefit of those who are in ear-shot. I guarantee that their performance will include some if not all of the following:

“See what I have to put up with?”

“You should see him on a bad day.”

“You can’t get the staff these days.

“It keeps him out of trouble / off the streets.”

“Feel this if you don’t believe me.”

“Swings and roundabouts, mate, swings and roundabouts.”

“His mother dropped him on his head as a baby.”

“I could do it but I can’t guarantee it’ll be a permanent fix.”

“I won’t bore you with all the technical details.”

“You don’t have to be mad to do this job [pause for a single heartbeat] but you do.”

They’ll also employ a fine selection of sharp intakes of breath that range dramatically in length, pitch and sibilance and thus allow you to gauge the cost of the repair accordingly.

Their banter is invariably worse (i.e. more intense and infinitely louder) if women with breasts are in the vicinity. A little cleavage will see their body posture attempt to emulate that of freshly waxed 1970’s muscle men whilst paradoxically deepening the amount of darkly furry bum crack that they have on show. They will also lie about in strangely contorted positions as they attempt to reach the necessary bit of pipe work / electrical conduit and allow their beer guts to roll around on the carpet like separate legless animals made out of tripe. This is naturally a vastly effective mating display and inevitably has the heavily breasted ladies of the office positively drooling into their Tipp-ex. Or possibly gagging. One of the two.

They will also trick you into making them a free cup of tea by employing a gag straight out of On The Buses or some other down-at-heel British comedy film of yore.

“What’s the name of that little thing that you put golf balls on?”

“A tee?”

“Ooh lovely, milk and two sugars in mine, please.”

Doh. How can I possibly defend myself against such forceful rapier like wit?

It strikes me that life must be fine indeed for the workman with a workman’s mate. You swan around all day thinking you’re Ronnie Barker. Curvy office ladies adore you. You get to handle the odd spanner or three and you sup all the free tea you can slosh into your voluminous belly. And you get paid vast amounts of money for taking 2 hours to do a 10 minute job.

Fantastic.

Hmm. I need to get me a beer gut and a comedy partner all of my very own...

What’s The Scores, George Dawes?

Whilst on the subject of tax (as I was in my previous post... kind of) have you ever wondered where all your hard earned tax money goes...?

Ahem.

We had new doors fitted to the Gallery a couple of weeks ago. Not cheap MFI reconstituted pine doors. No. Fancy, remote-sensory, duel pump powered, automatic, DDA approved doors. In other words, doors with attitude and ruddy great knobs on (literally).

They cost someone a lot of money. My employers. The local authority (though not alas on doors).

Two weeks later there are still a number of problems with the doors.

Unconnected, exposed wiring is still hanging down either side of them. I’m trusting to luck that none of it is live or essential to the building services.

The door sensors are a bit “over zealous”. They open at the approach of visitors – fine. But when they come to close again one doors senses the other and opens again. And again. And again. In short we have flapping doors. Coming into the Art Gallery is akin to storming into the saloon bar at Tombstone, Arizona. The doors flap dramatically behind you as your order your firewater at the bar.

And lastly (though rather importantly for a security conscious art gallery), the key is impossible to turn in the lock. Honestly you need to have the strength of Geoff Capes (remember him?) to get in or out of the building. My key is now so twisted it looks like a Möbius strip.

The door men are having to come back again to put all of this right. This will be their third visit in three weeks.

Ker-ching. Thank you for your donation.

Ariston And On And Off

Of course it had to happen.

Now that the first mortgage repayment has been made... now that the entire house and its contents are solely ours... the washing machine decides to go belly up and do a fine impression of a dying fly (complete with spin cycle and eco-wash option).

I came home yesterday afternoon to find the programming dial clicking manically through every point on its fascia while the washing drum sat flooded and still like Romney Marsh. My underpants were not happy.

So, as some wise blogger commented on this ‘ere blog a few weeks ago, now the house is ours so are ALL the bills. Oh joy.

Even as I write a washing machine repair man of the highest calibre has already been engaged to come to the rescue of my grundies on Monday afternoon.

Hopefully the operation will be quick, painless and cheap.

My pants await with baited breath...