One week on..........

It’s 2 weeks since the radiators arrived and 1 week since the plumber said he would come and fit them – so, are we cosy and warm at night now?

No, of course not!

For those of you thinking, hang on a minute, Neil’s a plumber so what’s the problem? This is the problem – plastic coated aluminium pipes that need a crimping machine to join them. Neil has used this system in the UK before but here in Spain the crimping machine is mega-bucks and it’s far cheaper to get a plumber in, who has the tools already, than buy one ourselves.

But, the snag is – you need to find a plumber who will actually turn up. To be fair, the one we had used before had turned eventually – and even within 2 hours when we had the leak – but this last week – nada!

It started of with promises that he would ‘maybe’ come, then on the day he was supposed to be here he didn’t answer my phone calls or my text messages, or the day after, nor the day after or even the day after that.

Then we were at the weekend and nothing.

Monday morning saw us up bright and early as we were going to Terreros for the day, Neil to play golf and me and the pups to spend the day with Lucy & Sophie. So, car packed, dogs all harnessed up I reached back and pulled the door shut.

And that’s when the whole day changed.

We have a double lock on our door and as I tried to turn the key I realised that there was a key on the inside of the lock and ……..

We were locked out!

Ooops!

The only option was to drive down to the Poligono to the window & door company and hope we could catch someone before all the workers left for their jobs that day. We hurtled down the mountain road at 100mph, the poor dogs clinging to the back seat as we cornered every bend but we made it in time – the owner was still there. I explained what had happened, mainly in Spanish but accompanied by a few ‘charade’ moves and ended with a huge plea – puedes ayudarnos, por favor?

After a few minutes he decided he could and followed us back to the house in his van. He tried pushing the key into the lock, hitting it with a hammer and ‘jiggling’ it about to see if he could dislodge the key on the other side, but no joy.

Then there was the ‘let’s stand back and think about this’ time after which he announced it would be cheaper to smash the glass at the side of the door then to drill the lock and replace it – so, 2 minutes later we were back in the house minus the long glass panel behind the reja’s. He would come back that evening to replace the glass.

Needless to say we were too late for Neil to play golf so we decided it would be a good day to do sort out the cage.

Oh, and back to the plumber. I half expected him to turn up on Monday because we would be out, but no. So, while we were out organising things we arranged for another plumber to come and fit the radiators and as I type this I have 3 very young, very fit Spaniards in my house (sorry Lucy, none of them are tall enough for you!) and by tonight we should be as warm as toast.

Having arranged for the work to be done by another company of course, the original plumber rang – it’s as if there is a secret network that channels information from one to another. So now I needed to explain that, because he hadn’t been and hadn’t answered any calls or text messages we had now instructed someone else – oh, how hard my brain is having to work these days to do all this in Spanish. Anyway, he seemed to get the gist very quickly and asked if we would be paying him for the work he had already done. Well, of course, there was nothing wrong with his work, he is a good plumber – just typical in not turning up when he says he will – except it would seem when he is due to collect his money – he was at the house less than 2 hours later.

P.S. The team of plumbers arrived at 9am. By 10am, they had downed tools for a break. You see this all over Spain – 10am is official break time and they all stop, sit down with their sandwich boxes and have, well, 10’ses. They then work through to 2pm when they stop for siesta – usually this goes on until either 4 or 5pm and then they work another couple of hours finishing around 7ish.