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Drains up entertaining.
Dec. 9th, 2006 03:33 pmJust under 24 hours ago, while we were cleaning the house for company, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler discovered that our drain was blocked, somewhere under the garden path - beyond the scope of baking soda, but thanks for the thought! So instead of driving into Newcastle to collect desperance and fjm from Seven Stories, he delayed long enough to phone our insurers, establish that this is covered by our insurance, try and fail to make an emergency call out to their preferred servicem, establish with them that it would be in order to use another service, and call out that service.
Long story: but the gist of it is that man from Other Service turns up, parks his van with gulping machine down the back lane, and clears the drain (the problem was a tree root growing into the drain, and clearly we are going to have to do something about those trees - nasty cypresses which don't deserve your pity).
Next the man from Preferred Company turns up: they had told us they had no-one in the area because he wasn't in the area, but he lives in Darlington and it wasn't too long a detour to call on his way home. He was extremely pleasant about this wasted journey, and I was impressed to be dealing with two people, both of whom clearly felt it was worth making an effort to help us out with this emergency. Yes, I paid for the service, but they were both employed, and they both felt that their job was useful and worth doing.
While I was on the doorstep talking to him, a very well-spoken young man (this is code for "probably a student") appeared, and asked if I knew of any Bed & Breakfast establishments in this street other than the big one at the top, as his mother had told him she was staying in a B & B in this street, and he couldn't find it...
And thendurham_rambler arrived home with desperance, fjm and bags and boxes of goodies for our dinner. Which gave me just time to vacuum down the stairs and change from what I had been wearing all day before Anne and Dick arrived, a little embarrassed to be early, but they had been sitting in the car listening to The Archers, and Anne had been so infuriated with it that she had had to leave. Thereafter all was opening bottles and conversation and good food, and an excellent evening (with functioning plumbing).
How you can tell we are not the younger generation, part 57: when we say that we will be able to find each other at our rendezvous because we both have mobile phones, one of us will be unable to call because we are not aware that our battery is flat, and the other will be unable to receive calls because we have inadvertently set our phone to vibrate instead of ringing.
durham_rambler discovered that our drain was blocked, somewhere under the garden path - beyond the scope of baking soda, but thanks for the thought! So instead of driving into Newcastle to collect desperance and fjm from Seven Stories, he delayed long enough to phone our insurers, establish that this is covered by our insurance, try and fail to make an emergency call out to their preferred servicem, establish with them that it would be in order to use another service, and call out that service.Long story: but the gist of it is that man from Other Service turns up, parks his van with gulping machine down the back lane, and clears the drain (the problem was a tree root growing into the drain, and clearly we are going to have to do something about those trees - nasty cypresses which don't deserve your pity).
Next the man from Preferred Company turns up: they had told us they had no-one in the area because he wasn't in the area, but he lives in Darlington and it wasn't too long a detour to call on his way home. He was extremely pleasant about this wasted journey, and I was impressed to be dealing with two people, both of whom clearly felt it was worth making an effort to help us out with this emergency. Yes, I paid for the service, but they were both employed, and they both felt that their job was useful and worth doing.
While I was on the doorstep talking to him, a very well-spoken young man (this is code for "probably a student") appeared, and asked if I knew of any Bed & Breakfast establishments in this street other than the big one at the top, as his mother had told him she was staying in a B & B in this street, and he couldn't find it...
And then
durham_rambler arrived home with desperance, fjm and bags and boxes of goodies for our dinner. Which gave me just time to vacuum down the stairs and change from what I had been wearing all day before Anne and Dick arrived, a little embarrassed to be early, but they had been sitting in the car listening to The Archers, and Anne had been so infuriated with it that she had had to leave. Thereafter all was opening bottles and conversation and good food, and an excellent evening (with functioning plumbing).How you can tell we are not the younger generation, part 57: when we say that we will be able to find each other at our rendezvous because we both have mobile phones, one of us will be unable to call because we are not aware that our battery is flat, and the other will be unable to receive calls because we have inadvertently set our phone to vibrate instead of ringing.
