The central heating is still kaput and now other appliances are getting in on the act. And my wife asks why I’m cross …
am in bed at 6.30am when the burglar alarm goes off. I know it’s not because someone is trying to break in – it’s the wrong noise. I sort of wish it was. It would mean that at least one thing in this house was working.“There’s, like, a fob,” I say. “It was on my keychain, but then it fell off.”I should have realised that the central heating going wrong was just the start of a roughly five-year cycle of domestic calamity: next comes the burglar alarm, then the smoke alarms.
The drawer where the spare fob should be contains only unlabelled keys, loose playing cards and passport photos that are no longer a true likeness of the applicant. The living room floor is ice cold under my bare feet. The noise of the alarm – two notes at an interval designed to drive anyone nearby insane – seems to be getting louder. As I continue to search, I begin swearing under my breath. Then over my breath. Then very loudly, to make myself heard above the alarm.
The alarm will keep going off until I pay a man £300 to stop it. He’ll show me how to reset it, and I’ll forget before he’s started his van“Why didn’t you do that before?” I say.“No, I don’t,” she says. “I’m going back to bed.” Mike is a very good plumber of very limited availability, from whom we are seeking a second opinion on our heating. But he’s on another job, and doesn’t know when he can drop round.Later that morning I’m in my office shed, warmed by a small heater turned up so high it’s making me sleepy, when my wife knocks on the door.When I get to the kitchen, Mike the plumber is on my wife’s phone talking to Alfie the plumber, who. Alfie is on speakerphone, listing everything he did that didn’t work.
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