Why are these things never simple?

I thought I’d be sitting down to write a blog post tonight about how happy I was to finally have my leaking pipe fixed.  After all, I rang the plumber this morning to remind him that he’d promised me about a month ago that he’d come back with the parts to fix it in a week or two (it was only a slow leak, a drip every hour or so, and the damage to the ceiling was already done, so I hadn’t been too concerned about the wait), and he was very apologetic and came right round, and he and his assistant went up into the attic and there was much sawing and banging and they replaced the faulty pipe, and checked that there was no longer a leak, and away they went with a promise to email me an invoice.
So I went back to work thinking all was good.  And then I got home tonight and heard a dripping noise.  Not from the original leak, but from the hot water cupboard.  I opened it up, and there was water running down the back wall of the cupboard.
Sorry, slight pause there because the plumber just turned up – I rang him when I saw the water, and the poor guy had to leave his dinner to come round (don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll charge appropriately).  He’s been up into the ceiling and had a look, and the leak’s coming from a completely different pipe than the one he repaired.  He of course said that these things often happen, that pipes of the same age fail around the same time, but I suspect that all that banging to get the old pipe disconnected this morning may well have contributed.  But of course he’s not going to admit liability by suggesting anything like that!
Anyway, end result is he didn’t have any of the right parts left to fix it, and the shops are all shut now, so the best he could do was promise to come back first thing tomorrow.  And in the meantime he’s shut off the hot water which has at least stopped the leak.  Means I’ve only got cold water for now, but I’ll survive – I can just go back to earthquake mode and start boiling water if I need hot, and my shower in the morning can wait until he’s been back to fix the pipe (or if all else fails, I’ll nip over to the swimming pool at Jellie Park and use their showers).
Seems like a good excuse to go and get takeaways for tea tonight though, so I’ve got fewer dishes to wash 🙂
Ok, anyone want to bet how many times in the next 14 hours or so I turn on a hot tap and am confused by no water coming out?

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4 Comments

    1. It’s my Scottish background. In Scotland (and most of the UK), tea is (or was – it’s changing under the influence of American media) the evening meal, and dinner was the midday meal (unless you’re very posh, in which case it’s a late evening meal). I grew up in a very Scottish family, so I acquired tea as my word for the evening meal. Weirdly though, I use lunch for midday – probably because that’s normal NZ usage, and I would have eaten most of my lunches at school, where everyone else spoke NZ English, not the weird half Scots/half NZ that’s my native language :-). Occasionally I’ll refer to the evening meal as dinner, but it’s usually when it’s a more formal situation, like if I’m inviting people to my house for dinner. When I’m on my own though I think of it as tea.

  1. I use the word tea for my meal in the evening but found that when I was working in the UK that my clients used the word supper and tea was always a cup of tea and a biscuit at 4 o’clock.

    1. It’s amazing how complicated words for meals can get, isn’t it? I know that which meal you called dinner used to be a shibboleth for social class – anyone aspiring to mix with the upper classes had to be very careful not to refer to lunch as dinner or their lowly origins would be exposed.

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