Behold the gas man cometh....

Yeah well, I spoke to Lisa from work this morning when I was waiting for the first gas man, and when she phoned back at some point this afternoon to say that tomorrows training wasn't happening and I was still waiting for gas man number 2 she said you should blog this, and frankly after what I've been through today, yeah, someone deserves a really good blogging.

Ok, so where to start with this - the saga of the gas main. Actually, in its entirety it's really the council's fault, 'cos they've started with this mass fly breeding programme - yes, otherwise known as recycling, but frankly if you ask me, it is one of the biggest mass fly breeding programmes known to man. So, in order to comply with this, we needed space to store the various numbers of bins, boxes and what have yous that the refuse recycling needs. So our landlord volunteered to build us a bin cubby, which - well, I was thrilled. Seriously. I was really thrilled. Particularly as the house down the road, which is being converted to flats, had just had this really flash bin cubby built - and ours frankly is a hot second. Imagine my delight as it took shape - it's no mean task excavating part of the front garden. We're on a mini hill you see, and there's an awful lot of muck and stuff to shift - and yes, there was.. duh duh duhhhh.. ( I feel I need either the Philharmonic or at the least a crazed organist to accompany this) the Cable cable, the Electric Cable and... more of the duh duh duhhh maestro please, the Gas main. And whilst the cables could be moved, the gas main couldn't, and as a consequence was left in solitary yellow majesty stretched across the lonesome might of Stalag Bin Cubby. (I'm telling you, not a tin could get out of there alive.)

Frankly, to start with all was well. Yes it was a gas main, but I knew it was in hand, I knew the gas board would arrive to shift it soon. A man had told me. A man in a suit, with a clipboard. I knew because I'd been there on that bright sunny day, full of optimism and 80 degrees in the shade, looking at it straight in the bright yellow poly propa whatever it is, a long yellow tube gleaming in the sunshine, uncovered in all it's majesty. Oh yes, he said, reasonably straight forward, he said, we'll be here soon, he said. Soon as the landlord OK's it, we'll be there, we'll take it from down there, dig a trench diagonally across the garden, connect it up to the street main, and it'll take a day or so but we'll get it done in no time. (Now's the time to start humming that wonderful tune they used to play at Russian Politburo funerals - you know the one, dumm dumm da dumm, dumm da dumm dumm dah da..)
Cut to September, nope, November - we're what, two and a half months later? In the interim, we've had new tenants move in, and they've spotted the gap in the fence. Oh yes. Our lovely new little bin cubby, it's been filled with rubbish - it looks frankly as if a group of travellers have moved in. There's even a toaster with it's cord wrapped lovingly around the neck of the gas mains rather alarming bulge - no earth to support it you see, it needs a toaster to lean on. Consultations abound, landlord arranges for van, van won't arrive to weekend, can you get them to move the stuff - I ask, but frankly the new tenants are Portuguese, and my Spanish is weak at the best. Weak my foot, it's non-existent. Time goes by..
Landlords gas and safety check, happens every year, I follow him round as he checks everything in the place. Nice little man turns up, for some reason doesn't seem to be much interested in the appliances, which was odd, even at the time. I asked, he said no that doesn't need to be done. Incidentally, I'd already waiting in for him all afternoon - I book these things weeks in advance, I say yeah, 12 to 4, that'll be fine and everytime I live in hope the bell will ring at 12, or 1, or even 2. No this one lives around the corner, and he comes just before he signs off for the afternoon. You just know he arranges it that way. You can't quite look him in the eye and accuse him of lying when you say how fed up of it constantly being so late in the day, but you know that the truth lies beneath that innocent gaze.

So to get back on track here, he arrives and starts checking stuff out. He's switched the gas off, and he's poking this, turning off that boiler, and at some point, he says, you know I can't quite pin it down, but I think there's a leak. Oh yeah I say, well have you checked out that thing in the garden. Oh what thing he asks, innocence personified - well ok, maybe he didn't glance to the left into Colditz's bin store as he raced up the steps, brightly imagining I'm going to just check these things out and I'll be home, in time to watch.. well, whatever this guy watches when he gets home of an evening. Well after he's tested everything, I persuade him to take a look outside. OH he says. Hmm he says. I'll never know how we managed to get away with not having it cut off then and there. Pipes like that, he says, aren't meant to be uncovered, he says, not meant to be exposed to sunlight he says. Right I say. When can you people come and fix it? I should mention by this time I've had several rather frantic chats on the phone with the landlord, who's told me the job was paid for ages ago and he has no idea why they haven't come to do it. Well says the little gas man, I wouldn't know. I'm only doing landlord check's you see. He's writing stuff on forms, and then he's on the phone to someone else, and before I know where I am he's telling me he's certified it - Certified it! Well I guess someone with a nice little set of white jackets to wrap around it and tie it up might help at this point, but having told us we have to watch it like hawks - after all, we're approaching Guy Fawkes.. he doesn't have to say anymore. I have visions of a mere sparkler landing in there - we'd be a large hole in the ground with unpleasant red stains. And an awful lot of rubble.
So.. well he didn't cut us off. I did my best to explain to Valeri downstairs (Estonian, I think, and no I don't speak the language, but thank God, he's picked up English amazingly well.)

So where was I? Yes, we waited. No emergency over the weekend, even thought the local pests set fire to the kids playground (check it out below.) Phonecall on Friday, they'll be here 8 am, Monday. 8 am arrives, and I'm up bright and early, and yes, man arrives at 8.30. They enter the house to cut the gas off at the meter. (That bit's important for later) (and why is this turning in to War and Peace?) They dig. They erect traffic guidance fencing. It's happening, old yella is disappearing, it's like dawn of the zombie dead down there, there's pipe everywhere. Actually, I have to say they did a remarkably tidy bit of work.

But. And this is where this moves from the casual observance into the realm of the farcical - he cannot re-enter the house to light the pilot lights on the boilers and re connect the gas. I have to wait for a chap to turn up to do that, he's booked him, he'll be there lunchtime.
Lunchtime! I spit on lunchtime, I kick dust on lunchtime! I spit on Murder She Wrote, I kick dust on Star Trek Voyager! Well what else are you to watch whilst you wait for the gas man. If the Iceman had been on the box I would have watched it. I could have watched Hamlet whilst I waited for the gas man, I could have watched what the hell is that thing, The Longest Day.

I phoned at 2. No not them, they'd never heard of me. (Had the gasman of the morning left me a contact number to call if there were any problems? No he had not. To be fair, he probably expected no problems.) I called the gas leak people. Ah you want.. rattle off a sequence of numbers. Ring them. Strangely absent woman answers phone, oh yes, she says, then sniffs. We have you down for a call before 4.30, sniff. It's only 20 past 2. Sniff.
Ok I say, and settle in for whatever Jessica Fletcher was competently sorting out - ha! competent! - well whatever it was. By the time Tuvok is writhing on the floor, I'm glancing at the clock and thinking, well, I won't repeat what I thought. Called them back. Hung on forever. At least five whole minutes. Finally phone clicks and I anticipate a real person on the line.. brr it goes, the other party has disconnected goes the machine. At that point I'm looking for the button of death that will reduce the other party to a charred cinder on the floor. I re-dial. I wait a further five to seven minutes whilst they play Vivaldi at me, by the time I'm finished I could bloody play Vivaldi.
The call is answered by a man I can only assume is a very sick Scots Liverpudlian. Very sick. Very very sick because I can barely understand a word he is saying, and he's calling me Love, for which he'd better be glad I don't have a button of death. Frankly, I could have flailed him alive from my living room, by mere sweep of my eyes. Sulu has been promoted and appears to be dying in front of my eyes, by some kind of virus that appears to invent memories in the brains it infects. At least I think that was what was going on. And I'm going to throttle whoever invented those Zargon adverts.

Deeply sick Liverpudlian man returns from where he has placed me on hold, and is deeply sympathetic. What is it about the sick that makes them that bit more understanding? He drip feeds me the dispatch office telephone number, empathy and apologies. It's just what I need. I give them the 45 minutes I promised and phoned again, ah another sympathetic man, full of apologies, oh but there have been so many emergencies today he explains. Bristol has so clearly been full of exploding gas cylinders, and leaking this that and the other - and I understand, I'm nice, I'm sweet, I'm lying through my teeth, but I want these people here, now, and the only way to achieve that is to fake understanding and tolerance for their position - in the hope that they will fakely understand and tolerate mine, and we might actually achieve something.

Gas man does arrive, at some point near to sixish I think. He's not come to turn things on, he's come to change the Governor! Then he will switch things on. Fine I say, there it is, get on with it and I'm upstairs if you need me. He does. I hear him flailing around in the loft twenty minutes later and go to see what's happening. Well, he says, I think you've got a gas leak.

He's got a box with a long bendy tube on it. He's poking it near anything that might remotely be a gas powered appliance. At some point (having excavated my tin and flour cupboard) he's looking at me seriously and saying I'll just check this and then I'll need to speak to the Landlord, and I'm phoning Phil to say there's a mad gas man here.. I tell him the story of the day. We agree I'll call him back if the worst comes to the worst. I'm wondering exactly what that implies.

Then the gas man comes back. Oh it's alright, he says. I pressed a button on the boiler, and it must have got stuck. I'm standing there in my kitchen thinking he's pressed a button? Is this right, he was marching around threatening the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and now he's telling me he pressed a button that got stuck and it's ok?? Well he is saying we need to get the boiler serviced, and I'm thinking to myself, exactly was nice little gas man doing last week that this is happening now?
Second gas man beats a swiftish retreat. I'm preparing to phone Phil and tell him what's gone down, part two. At least I did get to phone the council and order the new wheeliebins. Stalag Bin Cubby will get it's new occupants in approx two to three weeks - and I'll be there to paint their i.d.'s on with my pot of green paint. I've had my instructions from the Refuse Department. All the fault of the Council you see...