Working from Home
I am working from home this week. I agreed it with myself yesterday after discovering my other half had booked a plumber to come and rip the upstairs bathroom out. While I got a fair amount done, the majority of the day was spent listening to a racist old man complain about foreigners.
After he finished his closing monologue and went home for dinner, I discovered we had no hot water. I’m a logical person I thought, so I ventured upstairs to the cupboard where the hot water tank and pipes meet – I thought I might feel the pipes like some kind of hot water whisperer, and figure out which tap to turn.
This is where you find out the cupboard in the corner of the bedroom containing said pipes looks like it was built by the set designers for the 1960s version of 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo would have been delighted with the maze of pipes, junctions, and taps. I took one look, and a voice in my head shouted “NOPE”.
While wandering back downstairs to break the news about my ineptitude to my other half, I heard something odd from the bathroom. One of the many pipes now sticking out in mid-air with nothing plugging it was making gurgling noises. I frowned, and watched it for a minute or two, to make sure nothing was coming out of it.
I called the plumber, got his answer machine, and then informed everybody that we would all smell of deodorant tomorrow, because we had no hot water until the plumber returned.
Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the door. Our favourite racist was back, and heading straight for the Jules Verne cupboard in the corner of the bedroom. No faster had he twiddled something, there was a curious whistling noise in the bathroom, and the tuneful pipe from earlier was now gently squirting water across the room.
I’ll give him his due – he made sure he had the right tool for the job. Let’s ignore that the pipe kept firing water everywhere while he looked around on the floor for a particular screwdriver (especially as it was right in front of him). After finally locating it, and tightening something up, the water pistol fight stopped and he clambered back through the remains of our bathroom.
“Good job you didn’t figure out how to switch the hot water back on – because that would have brought the ceiling down”.
Roll on tomorrow.