There's truth in the old adage yet

... the adage in question being "it's not what you know, it's who you know". And I work in knowledge management, so I should know.

The situation went like this. Last spring M got rid of his old piano - some young Christian African men came and took it away and said they were going to ship it to Kenya to give to a school. I hope that's really what happened. In its place he rented a much better piano. The piano men said it couldn't live in front of a radiator.

After considerable negotiation, we turned off the radiator, first agreeing that we would move the room around once housemate S had left and we could relocate the big desk to her room (now M's room). Housemate S duly left, the desk was duly relocated, the piano was duly moved.

But we couldn't turn the radiator back on. It has a thermostatic valve and when it was turned back on, nothing happened. The room was chilly, and we had to heat the whole house to get one room warm. I was deeply miserable and v pissed off. My plumbing text book was no help. The boiler is due a service so I rang the boiler man to see if this is the sort of thing he could have a look while servicing the boiler but he didn't call back.

I sought advice from my plumbing teacher. He told me to take off the valve cover and release the pin with pliers. I did this but nothing happened. The next lesson, I told him that. Hmmm, he said, where do you live?

And so it was tonight that he drove me home after class and yanked the pin up and down vigorously with a pair of pump pliers. And lo, heat flooded into the radiator. So simple. So something that you need to see someone do, but once you have you never forget it. And it cost me a cup of coffee. Brilliant.

Compare this to my colleague K who paid some bastard £50 to fix the flush on her toilet, which he took while not actually fixing it. I shall repay D's favour in the karmic sense, by passing it on to someone else.

joella