Friday Photo: Still Life With Radiator

Because I’m still aiming for that “most boring blogger in the whole wide world” award, this week’s Friday Photo depicts the new radiator in our wreck of a bathroom. The one that’s STILL not been actually attached to the wall, on account of NO PLUMBER WILL COME AND DO IT. I hate plumbers. (Note: Unless any plumbers are reading this, in which case, I totally LOVE plumbers. Also: will you come and fix my radiator?)

This isn’t the radiator, of course: the one that was the cause of Watergate. No, this is the radiator that has, you know, been sitting in our shed for FIVE YEARS NOW because we were too lazy to call someone out to install it. Five. Years. I actually think we may have owned the radiator for longer than we’ve owned the house. I’m pretty sure we rushed out and bought it as soon as our offer was accepted (because clearly it was, like, really important to us at the time to have a radiator that is also a towel rack. Warm towels rock. Or I’d imagine they do, anyway. I don’t actually know, on account of we don’t actually HAVE a radiator in our bathroom. Not one that works, anyway), and I remember it living in the spare bedroom for a few years, before it made its way out to the shed. Terry did try and convince me that we should stick it on eBay at one point (this was around about year three, I think), but I was all “NO WAY! We really need that towel-rack-come-radiator! And one day we will have it installed in our bathroom!” Oh, the innocence of youth. Or, you know, the innocence of a couple of years ago. Whatever.

Also shown in this picture is the mess that is our walls, sans tiles. It’s still only without half of the tiles, though, and this is because…. it’s something to do with the radiator. I think. Terry has now called almost all the plumbers in the phone book (Note: I totally made that up because I have no idea how many plumbers he’s actually called. I may be boring, but I’m not quite at the stage of counting plumber-phonecalls yet. OK, it was about five. And he emailed a couple as well.) For some reason, all of them just say, “Yes, no problem, we can do that! Can you call me back tomorrow?” And then when you call back tomorrow, they say the same thing. WHY? What’s with the calling back thing? Is it just to get rid of us? And if so: WHY?

What I’m basically trying to say here is: we are no further forward with the bathroom project. And I think it’s started to make me insane. I mean, where have all the plumbers gone? I’m not good at dealing with rejection, and these dudes just keep on rejecting us, day after day after day. WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? Is our radiator-that-is-also-a-towel-rail not good enough, huh? Is that what it is? Will it never enjoy a useful life, fulfilling the purpose it was made for? And will it even care, given that it’s now spent five years in the shed/spare room anyway?

Anyway, at least one person in the house is happy, and that one person is Rubin, who has just updated his blawg. And it’s not about radiators, either. (It’s about a Tennis Ball on Legs. Which is much more exciting.)