‘Please, I’ll do anything,’ I told the plumber. ‘I’ll give you all the money I have if you just come back here for one day and connect the new hot water system.’
The plumber said no bother, he would come this weekend. But he says that every week, and every weekend when he doesn’t come he says he’ll come the next week. And the next week he says he’ll come at the weekend, and so on. And this has been going on for months. Which is nothing, apparently.
Frankly, the builder boyfriend could go to college and get a degree in plumbing faster than we could get a plumber
It is well known, and was made quite clear to us before we bought this beautiful old rundown Georgian house, that you cannot get a plumber in Ireland.
There are people here who have been waiting for years for a plumber. Two years is standard. An English artist up the lane has brown water coming out of her taps, no washing machine, no shower, and claims she hasn’t had any heating for five years. ‘Darling, it’s just the way it is round here.’
‘Yes, well, it’s not going to be the way it is for us,’ I told the builder boyfriend, who sadly cannot do plumbing. It’s the only thing he can’t do, but he has promised that if this goes on he will watch some plumbing tutorials on YouTube and teach himself how to install a hot-water system. ‘I just need to buy a pipe crimper,’ he declared the other day. ‘Yes, well, you do that,’ I said, tartly, for having no hot water can push a woman to the point of sarcasm.
Frankly, he could go to college and get a degree in plumbing quicker than we could get a plumber to do it.
Some months ago we found a very good commercial heating engineer who we somehow persuaded, with lavish promises of piles of money, to drive the two hours down the peninsula to us from the other side of Cork city.
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