At eight-thirty on the dot a white van drew up outside the front door. It was the plumber. A couple of weeks ago the first frost of the year had focused my mind on the fact that the radiator in my bathroom was so rusty it had had to be turned off, as the odd drip had developed into a flow. I'd managed over the summer by dint of spreading my bath towel out on the bed to dry each morning, but I drew the line at going through the winter with no heating in the bathroom. The radiator in what estate agents would call the family bathroom, although unless we have guests it is the Systems Administrator's bathroom, was still at the slow drip stage, but the SA said that if we were having one done we might as well get them both replaced at the same time.
I had a go at finding somebody to fix the problem in the summer, asking our friendly boiler repair man to quote when he came to do the boiler's annual service. It said on his business card that he also did general plumbing, but after weeks when nothing happened he admitted that actually he did not have time to do the radiators. I ended up ringing somebody who bothered to advertise in the parish magazine, knowing nothing about him beyond the fact that he possessed the gumption to advertise and had a genuine local landline number. Asking friends for personal recommendations for builders is never as helpful as you think it ought to be. Generally they have not employed that sort of specialist directly, or else their builder is on the verge of retirement and only does odd bits of work for people he already knows or is fully booked until the middle of next year or otherwise unavailable, or was so ghastly they would never admit them over the threshold again.
Our nominated new plumber came round to quote promptly, and supplied a very reasonable quotation to do the job practically the following week, and was cheerful, and had a small, silent teenage boy in tow who I guess was his son learning how to be a plumber. He measured the radiators so fast I was amazed he could be confident about the answer, and assured me there would be no problem in getting replacements that would fit the existing plumbing exactly. He was true to his word. In under an hour and a half we had two new radiators and not a tile out of place. They are warm. It is wonderful. I am waiting for any of my friends and acquaintances who live locally to mention that they need a plumber so that I can leap forward and recommend mine.
The SA and I tried to go out once the plumber had finished, only a red warning light flashed on the dashboard of my car. I felt mildly crushed that no sooner had I got the radiator problem fixed when something else went wrong. We had to hurriedly switch to the Systems Administrator's car and the SA promised to look into the warning light as soon as he had a moment. In the meantime I am still driving his car, which is almost the same as mine but has a subtly different gear ratios and gearbox, so that on the way to my emergency substitute speaker woodland charity talk I was half the time dawdling on to roundabouts more sluggishly than I'd have liked, and the other half of the time pulling away from junctions with an inadvertent squeal of tyres. The WI liked the talk, fortunately, and one sweet old lady with a mischievous face came up to me afterwards and told me she'd enjoyed it much more than if it had been the scheduled talk about nutrition. I should think so too. Who wants to worry about nutrition in the run up to Christmas? The time to agonize about that is in January.
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