After three weeks of house arrest, my optimism
started to falter. What was going wrong? I could not understand why each plumber accepted the job
so enthusiastically on the ‘phone, only to disappear off the face of the earth. At first, I felt sorry for those who rang to say they
had been involved in a car crash en route. But
after the third road carnage, my compassion, along with my optimism, snapped.
 Boiling
kettles (it takes thirty to fill a shallow bath) and washing my hair in limescale were
beginning to take their toll. Resigning myself to having to pay more than usual, I
turned to the Yellow Pages. There, I found page after page of plumbers, all providing
24-hour service, free estimations and no call-out charges. What’s more they all
claimed to be approved by CORGI (what one of the Queen’s dogs knows about plumbing
beats me). I selected the flashiest ad and made an
appointment.
Within a
couple of hours, three jumbo men were squeezing themselves into my tiny kitchen. Anxious to gain
their sympathy, I gave them an Oscar-winning performance of the hopeless female who
doesn’t know her buttock from her ballcock. I
then left the big boys to get on with the job while I went to have a manicure.
On my return, I was
dismayed to learn that due to ‘complications’ the original estimate had doubled. An already exorbitant fee of £1000 was now a
bring-the-little-manicured-lady-to-her knees sum of £2000.
It seemed rather a lot for a boiler, but I assumed that for that amount I would be
getting nothing but the best.
Having
insisted that I leave the cheque blank (‘we’ve got a stamp in the van’),
Kevin and his two sidekicks disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared. While digesting the sad fact that I would have to live
off bread and Perrier for the rest of my life, I went to inspect my new state of the art
boiler. With
all its wires hanging out, its scratched cover and poncy French name, it looked far from
prepossessing.
Still, appearances
don’t count for everything. I pushed the start
button to discover that they do. I was gutted -
not, however, as much as the front of the house. Outside,
a gaping hole had been left in the brickwork of my period building. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, a massive silver
phallus had replaced the previous neatly boxed-in ventilation. I examined the other flues
in the street. None of them bore any
resemblance to my thrusting monster.
Over the next
few days, I could think of nothing else. Wherever I
looked, it loomed huge and terrible on the horizon. At night, I woke screaming, as giant silver worms
pursued me through the marshlands of my unconscious.
It’s bad enough
being taken for a ride. Realising that it was due
to your own naïve, starry-eyed faith in humankind makes it worse. I vowed never again to be the clueless woman. And having swotted up on boilers at the library, I wrote
Kevin a stern, highly technical letter and his cheque. And
then I prepared to wait….
The response was
immediate. Kevin was begging to come back to
‘finish the job properly’. Not wishing to
overdose on feminism, I hired a male friend to act as a heavy for the day.
I needn’t have
bothered. Without so much as a murmur, a
grovelling Kevin set about shortening his phallus, plastering, repairing, and generally
‘making good’.
It’s a
fine thing to learn from mistakes. This whole
unfortunate episode has taught me several important lessons. First of all,
being a damsel distress doesn’t work any more. Secondly,
never go out when there’s somebody fiddling with your pipes. And lastly, if by any chance, you do find a reliable
member of this elusive profession, hang on to him/her for dear life. They are worth their
weight in corgis.
 If you have any problem with a boiler, contact www.corgi-gas.com
to find a registered installer for overhaul and repairs.
If you inherit an old boiler, ask to see the approved certificate to show that it
was inspected within the previous twelve months.
Ensure that your boiler is inspected by a registered Corgi installer once a year
You can also take a look at previous
personal views by Harriet Ewe:
Personal view 6 - The big lie
Personal view 7 - How I became a serial killer
Personal view 8 - Rebranding feminism
Personal view 9 - Here`s looking at you kid
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