THE STOPPED COCK

No road trip today. Hastings happened last Saturday.

We drove, with Norman guiding us, to Hastings Old Town. And a pretty place it is too.

We went to the ‘Stables Theatre’ to see a play about Gangstas. We went with people who had been gangstas. The play drew in a capacity audience, including the screenwriter, who’d adapted it for the stage. It weren’t to my liking guv, but it was good to see a full house of thespianistic supporters.

This trip to Hastings, our Holy Grail, was mostly in the dark. No sky to see, no people to watch, just a sinking sun and the shadows of a Saturday night. It was an unsatisfactory trip since Hastings wasn’t in view. A visit, in the day time, to the old fishing huts is on the cards though.

Now Thursday is our awaydayout but today no road trip for us.
Thursday, with a blistering sun and no wind, was meant to be a National Trust Property visit in the TN34 area, but due to a seizure we couldn’t go.

Last week we booked a plumber, a fine figure of a man who skis on the Swiss mountains in between turning taps. We bribed him with a doughnut and coffee cos he is so booked up. He turned up, wearing his mask, and went upstairs and looked at our bathroom. We have but one bathroom in our little cottage, always warm, soft shaggy carpet and a Victorian dresser. The bath tap takes 15 hours to fill a bath. The sink tap must be wrestled with to release cold water, and the bidet squirts water either side of the bideteer.

The masked plumber told us it would take as long as it took and then Bobs your uncle we would have a bathing experience like normal people.

He came yesterday morning. Took his mask off to drink his coffee and eat his Yum Yum – they had run out of doughnuts – collected his tool kit from his van, went upstairs and set about the tapping solution.

He came downstairs to look at the stop cock.
The stop cock is in the cellar.
Our cottage is ancient and the stop cock may well be as old as William the Conquerer.
The plumber took out his spanner and to unscrew the stop cock. Only he couldn’t. He applied WD40 – thats’s a moisture dispelling spray not a Reggae band from Birmingham – . But whatever he did the cock stop would not budge. We put the cold water tap on in the kitchen to watch the water dwindle but it didn’t.
The cock stop had seized up.
The plumber went outside looking for the mains water supply, Went into the road. Went under the sink went behind the boiler. He returned to the cellar and tried his spanner again, but sparingly since he said if he turned it too hard it would break the fucking stop cock and then fuck only knows what would have happened. My words.

He left, after I had called South East Water. We all agreed we weren’t an emergency, so the masked raided packed up his bags and left. I will make sure I get proper doughnuts for his next visit.

The waterboard will be with us within two weeks. But in the meantime I took out an insurance policy for 50p a month – a yrs offer – so we would be covered for drains and pipes and seized up stop cocks. They said no win no fee so we agreed to a member of their team coming round today to fix the cocked up stop cock.

Between 8-1 a young unmasked plumber would be descending the stairs to the cellar so that we could then rebook the masker raider and have flowing water.

I am aware this is a first world problem, I am aware that in Kyiv and Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen, our trickling tap, far from being a nuisance would in fact be a Godsend. But I live near the Royal Brough of Tunbridge Wells, so my gripes are all about first world fuckeries.

The boy wonder turned ap and 12.30. I was in the garden pulling up weeds and pruning the rosemary. The possibility of a day out now became real as he would unstop the stop cock and we could be on our way to a fancy house for tea.

He turned his spanner, he looked under the sink, behind the boiler, he went out into the road, but the main cock was nowhere be seen. He berated me for supporting Spurs, and left. We did not have to pay him £99 since his handling of the cock was as unsatisfactory as the skiing plumber.
So we now await the South Eastern Water authority to send people round who will find the water source in the road, go down into the cellar, unsieze the stopped cock, put in a new one, by which time we can then rebook the masked skier in for a second time so he can fix the washers and clean the discs and make our bathroom a thing of beauty.

Once the taps are done I can then call a man in Tonbridge to come and respray our cast iron bath pristine white, change the carpet to a dark green, and then we will have a bathroom fit for oligarchs. I was told last night by my theatre going friend that carpets in bathrooms are old fashioned.
Well a full-blown raspberry to that. I am old fashioned. I am of the generation that grew up in winters when ice formed on the inside of the windows and uncarpeted bathrooms were so cold you needed a hot water bottle to thaw the toothpaste.

The stop cock had defeated two plumbers and our day out became a day in. Well not so much a day in as a day out in the garden.

I mowed the lawn, I revealed purple crocuses and little white narcissi. The tulips are about to burst in the old butlers sink and the Magnolia tree is threatening to oust its tulips any day soon. The cabbages have been eaten by the birds, the kale has gone to seed, but the daffodils and hyacinths are flowering all over the place. My fingers are ripped to shit from pulling out stinging nettles and self seeded brambles. I have a huge bruise on my right thigh when I lost my balance, twirled round like Darcy Bustle and ended up in an old washing machine tub. I got stuck, the dawter and husband pulled me out. I cried but I could hear her laughing behind a bush.
The Hellebores are now standing proudly without a ton of mulched leaves under them. The comfrey is flowering and the the Magnolia stellate is about to reveal its deliciously splayed white flowers. The clematis is budding on the cottage wall and the snow drops, which arrived yesterday, will be planted in a fashion that when 2023 comes we will have a carpet of white flowers before the yellow daffs and lemon primroses take their place.

So we didn’t get to Hastings and the stop cock is as stuck as it ever was, but the sun shone and I breathed in nine hours of the smell of spring.