Victoria’s father’s instructions loudspeakered from Leeds on his daughter’s mobile phone allowed us to effect a repair on a recalcitrant radiator which would otherwise have facilitated a hefty callout fee. Hmm. I quite like that sentence. Usually, I agree with Lord Denning’s advice to separate most clauses into their respective sentence; but once in a while, it’s enjoyable to let rip on a full string, juicy for parsing in some translation exercise. “Die Aufgaben des Vaters Victorias ..”

Anyway, the retrospective saving justified my purchasing a Sony LCD “high-def” telly today. And very nice it is too. Lifting the old broken CRT leviathan off its stand led to a heart-skipping moment where I thought that either my foot or the cat would be pancaked, but all ended well. So, working television and working radiator. Sadly, though, not all matters of plumbing can be rectified with paternal invocations, and an engineer had been arranged to attend our moribund water pump. The device has lain seemingly uselessly beneath our bath since we moved in, and has refused to engush our water pressure beyond the old-fart-with-enlarged-prostate trickle we and our guests have endured. The engineer would, apparently, replace whatever PCBs required replacing, fix whatever valves needed fixing, tut about the cowboys who had previously plumbed in the device, and generally earn his callout fee.

I worked from home to facilitate his arrival, and a genial fellow of middle age appearance and demeanour appeared in the early afternoon. A quick tour of the house’s plumbing, questions about stopcocks, and, yes, genuine tutting about the “cowboys” who had plumbed our pump under the far corner of the bath, making it quite inaccessible without ripping off the tub’s fascia. It looked like a crow bar would have to be readied. Before any wanton destruction, though, the gentleman asked whether I knew of any odd switches, sockets or cables in the bedrooms or landing. He kept asking, and, truth be told, I was becoming annoyed with the repetition:
“No, we don’t. I know our bedrooms well, having sought the various power sockets and so on to plug in computer equipment, clock radios and so on. There’s nothing unaccounted for.”
“Are you sure? Do you mind if I take a look?”
Oh, for goodness sake! Still, humour the simpleton, get this stupid quest over with so he can actually begin working on the bloody broken pump:
“Ok, be my guest. You are wasting your time, though, I promise you”.
He immediately found a cable that emerged from the floor of the 2nd bedroom. A cable with a plug at its end. A cable I suddenly remembered discounting some months ago, its having no causal or effective interest to me. I think I have the memory of unplugging it soon after arriving in the house.
He plugged it back in. He turned on the tap. Niagra Falls. He was sheepish, but soon overcame this with the brandishing of the invoice:
“To be honest, I prefer it when there’s a fault, so I can earn my callout fee”.
“Credit card ok?”
“Yes – that’ll be 75 quid, thanks”.
It annoyed me to pay it, of course, but it felt right that my confounded arrogance was suitably fined.

So, working radiator, a nice new telly, and restored water pressure. Bliss. As consummate a way to end a domestically productive day as any. Time to enjoy the new telly. What a pity that the final ever episode of Carnivale sputtered out with so many loose ends. Still, that’s what happens when you get your series cancelled with 6 more seasons of plot left. The final episode, set in the 30s dust-bowl as ever, made me feel encrusted with grime. Agreeable, then, that my bath took just two minutes to fill rather than the heretofore customary 20.