The Big Drip

My Dear Fellows & Dear Princess Normal,

I have been home all day today. It is because we have a drip. It manifested itself in the bathroom, coming through one of the light fixtures.

I'm no DIY expert, but I'm pretty sure light fittings aren't supposed to do that.

Caro had a medical council registration workshop thingy all day, so I had to go to work, get my laptop, explain I was working from home and then go home again. Lemon was most displeased.

"Who am I supposed to talk to about Marvel films??" she complained. 

I made my apologies and left. Going back home at 7:30am meant I got some nice pictures from the botanics. The light turned everything bronze, as you can see from my very artistic picture. Isn't it though? Artistic? Oh please yourselves.

The plumber arrived at around 11am. He was a large burly man, and the leak was clearly coming from the water tank in the loft. The hatch to the loft is about the size of an LP cover. He squinted at it. 

"If the shoulders go through, the rest can go through," he said. And to my amazement, he managed to squeeze through the hatch! I think he must have dislocated something to get in there.

When he came back down he told me I had a problem with my cold water compression valve. "I'm going to have to leave the water running so as to avoid creating a vacuum," he told me.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," I said thoughtfully, resting my chin on my hand. "Yup. That sounds like a valve compression problem all right. For sure. And you want to avoid those vacuums. Yep."

Why do plumbers even bother explaining things to male men people? We don't know anything about plumbing despite owning willies. He really could have just come down from the loft and told me, "It's cuffed," and I would have been satisifed with that. Now here we both were, trapped in the lie that I knew what the eff he was talking about.

He went off to get a spare part and came back with a mate who was skinnier BUT TALLER than him. I watched in disbelief as they both disappeared into the loft. There was a bit of banging and a few thuds and then 45 minutes later they were done. 

"Thanks for sorting that whole compression valve vacuum situation," I thought of saying, but really, I would just be embarrassing myself.

So theoretically I worked from home while all this was going on. I am rubbish at working from home. I actually found myself nodding off during a Skype meeting. Thank goodness it wasn't a video conference. And I have to admit 2 or 3 black and white films might have been on the telly while I "worked" as well.

It wasn't necessarily the most productive day. But it was a good day, nonetheless. And my cold water compression looks much healthier.

S.

p.s. Auslaender, do you remember the word "cuffed"? You used to use it in an anagramatic sense all the time, back in the day. I think we should bring it back.