…(cont from previous entry)…
They did the next day & I took the call & was perhaps more pliant than I should have been – so Louise took over while I went to get another bit of information from the packaging. She was more strident with them & ended up with another call back from the manager where she had to argue the point that we did buy it on the premise that there were bulbs included, we bought extra bulbs for another set of lights that did not have them included & just because you buy something in the sale that you do not expect to get substandard bulbs. The manager capitulated & we should be being sent the missing bulbs. Having said that – they should have called us yesterday to confirm… Maybe we will have to yet resort to ‘customer services’. The manager of course blamed the shop assistant who sold it to us, but them she was only passed the products at the last moment by a ‘floor assistant’ who was dealing with us & gathering up the stock (from the back room where it was not supposed to have been moved). I worry that someone will get the rocket for a mistake that we have highlighted & was not her fault… Perhaps I worry too much about the other person.
Oh – the quip earlier about it raining in our back room: Friday night – just as Jack had fallen off to sleep. I heard a whooshing sound & Louise yelp. I wondered why Louise had seemingly poured a great deal of water into the bath next door, just as Jack was slipping into slumber. Louise than called me from downstairs… eh? Not next door in the bathroom? As Jack seemed off I bobbed downstairs. Louise had been standing in the back room when a great whoosh of water fell from the ceiling. There was a burst pipe! Suspecting it was the hot water I turned the boiler off. The water was only really dripping & it died down soon enough. The whoosh was because of the build up of a ‘bubble’ of water under the wallpaper on the ceiling, which ‘burst’. SHAG! Having just been on the phone with the lighting department earlier this evening, it was back on the phone to the insurance agency (after some scrabbling around for the appropriate bits of paper). So then – we explained what we thought it would be to the bloke who coordinated the emergency plumbers who is subcontracted by the insurance agency. (Arcane comes to mind as a description of a system here.) We thought that it would be the join from the old lead pipes to the new pipes that had been installed with the new boiler. Seemed plausible, as that was what Hattie (our plumber) had been worried about. She could not come to help, as she was in Spain, on holiday, as we found when we called her mobile & got through to her – on holiday… in Spain… oops. Ah well.
So we stayed in on Saturday & waited. It was a nice day – so it was no bother. We had intended to go out on a shopping expedition to get back a pair of sandals for this hot weather we were having. It was a glorious day, so it was pleasant enough to be out & about in the garden & so forth. Chatting to our neighbour Caroline (who has been so good to us) she said that there were some sandals in the cobblers. They stock new shoes, cheap. There were & they were good. Jack has his new sandals. No urgent need to be away. So, we were in when we received the call from the plumber expected to visit mid to late afternoon. He was in Stockport. He could still make it today if required, but it would be about 9:00… yeah, right. So we opted for the next day. Up bright & breezy again, & he did turn up on his 1st visit. All tattoos & complaining of a hangover. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that Hattie, our plumber was not, in fact, a man. As that seemed to be what the source of the problem was – a woman doing it… ah, ok then. fine. So, after sawing his way through a few floorboards to access the point that Hattie seemed not to have needed to saw the boards to reach he told us what we suspected – the lead to copper seals had gone… He was ‘not told’ that there would be lead to copper – so had not brought any fittings that would fix them.