Emerging from January blues

I'm ever so grateful to you lovey, said the little old lady.

Well, I said, thank you.

What I didn't say: thank you for waiting an extra week for me to come round given that I went into NGO X last Monday for Haiti stuff and on Tuesday I just couldn't face dealing with anything at all. Thank you for having an immaculate kitchen. Thank you for choosing a plumber to fit said immaculate kitchen who put proper isolators on your taps. Thank you for having a no-frills budget, resulting in an old-style mixer tap with washers, rather than one of those fancy ones with ceramic inserts that you have to go and find in a merchants somewhere. Thank you for leaving me to it rather than watching.

I knocked a fiver off for an easy job, and turned the water pressure down a bit on her cold tap so it didn't splash all over her immaculate kitchen.

She said it was so nice to see women branching out and could she have my card.

I think that's what you call a win-win situation.

joella

Hurty foot update

This isn't a very good 'after' photo: there are still strips covering the stitches and there was a bit of bleeding which I haven't been able to wash off yet. 

But let's just say it hurts. Not so much when I'm not doing anything, but a lot if I try and walk on it. They did warn me. I did say 'yes of course I'll take it easy'. I didn't quite realise I wouldn't have any choice. 

Which made it all the weirder when, nine hours after I can back from hospital, when I was lying on the sofa full of wine, painkillers and macaroni cheese, the doorbell rang in an urgent kind of way. It was the students from next door -- the side we like -- asking if we knew how to turn their water off as their toilet had exploded and the bathroom was flooding. So I grabbed a walking pole and hobbled round. We got the water off but the toilet didn't have an isolator. 

So M followed with my tools, and I ended up breaking all the rules of plumbing: don't do it when you're a bit pissed, don't do it in your favourite trousers, don't do it when you can't walk. Nothing too drastic - just cut the pipe to the toilet and stuck a cap end on it so they could put their water back on, but they couldn't believe their luck, and I woke up the next morning in a codeine haze thinking 'did that really happen?' 

Guess it did. And, as the nurse said, Moley's in a pot now. I wanted to ask how she knew I'd called her Moley, but I guess it's a pretty common name. 

joella

An invitation to the School of Life

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from Roman Krznaric, who I have met a few times - I once hung a radiator in his front room, and for several years I had a wood chest in my garden that used to belong to him and his partner K. He was calling because he is leading the 'Work' course at the School of Life, and he wanted to know if I would come and give a talk about becoming a Lady Plumber.

I was full of reasons why I might not be a good person to give such a talk - I am not really a plumber (or am I? I don't know), I'm still a 0.6 FTE NGO X wage slave, I actually bring in substantially less money that I did before I hatched this plan (though I grow my own salad leaves now, thus saving untold ££s), I don't really know what happens next - but he said no, that was all cool, and the course was just as much about questions as about answers. OK then, I said, you're on.

I was more nervous than I thought I would be, but maybe everyone is when they talk about themselves. Plumbing is quite easy to play for laughs, which helped, and there is a story in there - the Dark Days in the New Building, the inspiring if unpredictable presence of J the plumber, the urge to challenge a few stereotypes, and hell, to do something new. I don't think there's anything extraordinary about my experience, and nobody who finds it as hard to get out of bed in the morning as I do is ever going to change the world, but maybe that's the point.

And it was great fun. The best bit was the Q&A session... it was interesting to say out loud things that I have only really ever said to myself. Someone asked if I'd thought about going back to help out at the college, and wouldn't that be a good thing to do, and I'd sort of thought about it, but not for a while, and yes it would.

Generally, it was inspiring to be around such active thinking about the nature of work, what's important about it, and how it defines our lives. I'd like to have more of these conversations out loud. It's not an easy thing to do, so respect to the School of Life for starting some those conversations off.

joella

A girl can dream

We paid a visit to my Significant Aunt in Shropshire last weekend, and a lot of fun it was too, although the main purpose of the visit, the initiation of Project Skirting, was shelved. I have never been able to get my sewing machine to run properly, it keeps clunking and jamming. It turns out that this is actually because there is something wrong with it, rather than because I am unable to RTFM. Which was disappointing, but also a relief. I don't like to fail with machinery. We discussed making it with her machine instead, which is many years older, many times heavier, and works beautifully, but it didn't feel like the right thing to do.

So we did other things instead, including consume rather a lot of Stinking Bishop cheese, together with the perry it is named for, following a walk of just the right Sunday length along the Shropshire Union Canal. We spent a lot of time in the kitchen, which is huge, solidly built, beautifully designed and stupendously clean. My favourite thing in it is the rubber gloves holder, which was constructed from the poles of two wooden kitchen roll holders sawn off at a slight angle and mounted on the same base. But I also like the Aga.

The reason the kitchen is so bang-on in every respect is that it was decades in the planning. My aunt and uncle spent many years living in married quarters on RAF bases dreaming of the kitchen they would one day build. And now they have.

As I thought about this, I realised that for years I have been doing the same thing, but not for a kitchen. There is a dream bathroom in my mind, which slowly evolves and may one day take shape. Not in this house though... my dream bathroom cannot be accommodated in a Victorian terrace with dodgy plumbing. I am not even sure it can be accommodated in Oxford, as the water here is hard hard hard, and my dream bathroom has a lot of glass to keep clean.

I already pretty much have my dream bath, which is long and narrow and deep and made of steel. But in my dream bathroom it would not have a shower over it and serious grouting issues. It would have space around it and a view out of a non-frosted window. There would be a big radiator with a rail over it for my big fluffy towel, a shelf or table for books, drinks, snacks etc, and some large potted plants oxygenating the steamy bathroom air. The floor would ideally be painted and sealed wood, with a deep pile bath mat one could wriggle one's toes in. The bath mat would have its own place on the wall (or maybe on one of those ceiling-mounted clothes airers with a pulley and a cleat) so it didn't stay on the floor getting manky. The lighting would be bright, I am not one of those candles in the bath people.

Baths are solo things, though we usually share the water to avoid enviro-guilt, but there would be a walk-in glass shower enclosure with two showers in it so two people could shower at the same time in the morning. This is the bit our plumbing could not cope with. Megaflos and power showers are even worse for the environment than baths, and also a maintenance headache, and electric showers are just a bit crap, so it would be a case of a decent boiler, a large hot water cylinder and a large head of pressure. Am sure it's possible.

The basin would be a classic, with two taps and a pedestal and a plug on a chain. I do not have this European insistence on mixer taps, I hate pop-up wastes, and I am fine with visible pipework, as long as it is elegantly done. It would have a normal mirror over it, plus one of those cool adjustable magnifying ones for detailed facial scrutiny, but there would otherwise be no mirrors in the room.

There would be two WCs, part of the bathroom but in separate alcoves. I am not squeamish about these things, but I like the idea of having my own toilet. If they're next to each other, with changing room-style swing doors, the plumbing wouldn't be overly complicated and there would be no arguments about who gets to go first or who left reading material about avant garde 20th century music all over the floor.

Finally, there would be a raised platform, ideally with a view out of the same window as the bath, which would be carpeted and which would have a couple of comfy armchairs and a small table for more books, a radio, snacks and drinks. This is where one would recline while waiting for the bath to fill, or to talk to the person who was in it, or to curl up afterwards wrapped in towels.

There would be lots of hooks on the walls for dressing gowns etc. And there would be lots of pictures on the wall. There would be minimal tiling, apart from splashbacks around the bath and basin, and lots of tongue and groove in seaside colours.

I have never seen this bathroom. I am rather hoping I never do until I get to make it myself. It would be very hard to appreciate my own bathroom once that had happened, and my own bathroom does its best with what it has.

joella

We have lift off! (Probably)

So BJ the plumbing assessor looked at my plasterboard chase photo, looked sideways at me and said 'are you left-handed?'.

Yes, I said.

Hmmm, he said. And then he signed it off.

So unless the small detail of it being the wrong type of wall is picked up by the IV (internal verifier) or the EV (external verifier), I have finished my NVQ.

Congratulations lass, he said, shaking my hand. Cheers, I said, grinning like an idiot.

He gave me a receipt for my folder. I shall stick that on the wall till the certificate arrives. I agreed to come back and have my photo taken for diversity purposes. A genuine woman! And a left-hander!

And now I'm off to Lancashire to connect with my past and convene with my kin. And raise a glass to the free world.

joella

Interim review

What feels like a long time ago, but was probably about four years, I took a deep breath and walked into a plumber's merchants on a Saturday morning. 'I'd like a WC siphon please', I said, when the man behind the counter eventually looked over at me.

'Round or square'? he said.

Shit. I had no idea, as the thing I had in mind had kind of rounded bits and kind of square bits. I nearly legged it and never went back, but instead I blushed and said 'um, can I see them both?'.

It was a square one, most of them are. In fact I've only ever seen one round one and it was from the 1950s. The cistern was made from asbestos. I'm sure he knew that.

On Monday I went into see D, the plumber's merchant that J the plumber introduced me to. They've known each other since they were 10, and call each other 'Marmite mangler', which seems to me to be a 10 year old's insult if ever there was one.

All right? he said. What can I do for you today?

I need a WC siphon please, I said. Low level? he said. No, close-coupled, I said. And it needs to be kind of short. Eight inch two-part do you? he said. Perfect, I said. And a doughnut washer, please.

Rubber or foam? he said. Oooh, I said, I've only used the foam ones. What do you think?

I'd go for rubber, he said, you get a bit more give.

Rubber it is then, I said. (And he was right). In fact I got two, and am currently wearing the other one as a sort of 80s-style bangle.

I'm still waiting for the final photo opportunity that will seal my NVQ (I thought a plasterboard chase would do, but turns out it needs to be masonry). But nonetheless, there is progress.

joella

Under Sink Cupboard

Under Sink Cupboard
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

We plumber-sociologists can tell a lot about a person by the state of the cupboard under their kitchen sink. I've seen a lot of these cupboards, not because I've worked on a lot of kitchen sinks (although I have worked on a few) but because that is usually where you find the mains stop tap -- and even if it's not there, it's the first place you look.

They are often pretty disgusting places. This is for two main reasons:

1. Hardly anyone ever cleans them out. A clean bathroom is no indicator of a clean under-sink-cupboard (USC) -- in fact a clean bathroom often means that the person who lives there pays someone else to clean it. You deal with your USC yourself, you do, and it separates the men from the boys.

2. They are wet and/or greasy. New kitchens are often put in in a tearing hurry, no corner left uncut, and the traps leak or the seal round the sink doesn't work properly, or, as in the case of our cheap kitchen sink and every other cheap kitchen sink like it, the pop up waste is a load of leaky old shit and the water gets in round the edges and drips straight down onto the Brillo pads underneath, creating a big lump of smelly sticky rust. (There are not words for how much I hate pop up wastes. They should be banned. But that's another story).

Sometimes you find that USC is empty. This is either because the customer has thought ahead and cleared it out -- that's only happened to me once -- or because they don't own any cleaning products. These people will also not have any milk. They are squatters in their own homes. They will probably have a big leather sofa though, and their new sanitaryware will be oversized and cheap. I do not often warm to these people.

Other times, you will find that it is so absolutely rammed with random crap that it takes about 20 minutes to empty it. This is especially frustrating when it turns out that the stop tap is not actually in there after all, but you don't find that out until you've decanted years and multiples of methylated spirit, J-cloths, picnic paraphernalia, tea lights, shoe polish, light bulbs, hoover bags, paint brushes, pet food etc. These people will also have a fridge full of random crap, some of it also not excavated for years. Their bathroom will be painted in an unexpected colour, which they'll have done themselves and never quite finished. It will be impossible to work in without knocking over an MFI shelving unit that contains 47 bottles of random toiletries, and it will feature lots of cobwebs. These people buy TOO MUCH STUFF, all of it cheap. They watch lifestyle programmes on TV but never manage to change their lifestyles. They are forthcoming with cups of tea, though, and nearly always have biscuits in.

Other times again, it will just be a bit manky and contain brushes, cloths, rubber gloves, cleaning products, washing powder, dishwasher tablets and the household carrier bag collection. If they're in, these people will apologise profusely for the mess it's in and insist on emptying it themselves. You might not even need to go there, because these are the people who also know where their stop tap is, and turn that off themselves as well. They clean their toilets regularly, including the walls and floor around it, and they also often have real coffee. They generally find a plumber first and then decide what to do, rather than spending a fortune in Bathstore on stuff that will never look right in their house or work right with their plumbing. These are the slightly anxious people and I like them best.

Possibly because I've had so many of them inflicted on me, cleaning out my own USC has been on my to do list for about two years, even though the only person who I'm likely to inflict it on is myself. Last weekend, I did it. Check it out.

I probably don't need to add that I am very pleased with myself. In the process I discovered a bottle of descaler, so I descaled the kettle (satisfying); I discovered an ancient bottle of Lemon Ajax and a Spontex scourer, so I cleaned the outside of the kettle (*very* satisfying); and I discovered a packet of silver dip cleaner, so I cleaned all the silver plated cutlery that used to be M's mother's and had been slowly turning black (*incredibly* satisfying).

Rainy Sunday afternoons aren't all bad. They allow one's hidden domestic goddess a brief moment in the sun.

joella

The gender politics of insertion

I was down in a basement, trying to get a fall on a bath waste. What you need there, said BJ the plumbing assessor, is an emanef into the soil stack.

A *what*? I said.

He described it in a bit more detail. Oh, right, I said. I'd call that a street elbow.

[A normal elbow is a 90 degree bend that takes pipe at both ends. A street elbow takes pipe at one end and a fitting at the other. They are very useful for getting round tight corners. Here, we had an elbow onto a bit of pipe pointing downwards into a cut off soil stack. A street elbow would mean the pipe could go in right up to the bend, saving a very important 20mm or so.]

It's a street elbow in copper, he said. If it's waste, it's an emanef.

I eventually worked out that it's called an 'M and F', because it is female (receiving) at one end and male (inserting) at the other. I *hate* asking for male and female things in the plumbers merchants. T, I said to the customer, you don't fancy popping down Travis Bickle* for a 40mm solvent weld M and F do you?

T is the absolute best kind of customer - easy going, involved, on-hand with his (considerable) brute force where required, and willing to go to Travis Bickle and ask for things with embarrassing names.

All good. But I wonder if we will ever have a world where you can screw (or in this case glue) one thing into another without one of them being male and the other female. I know it's an obvious thing to call them. I know that the tiny flicker that crosses the guy's face when you ask for them, which means he's just had the same thought you've had, shouldn't really, in the big scheme of things, matter. But, you know, it does.

joella

*Travis Perkins. But M has always called it Travis Bickle, and then we found out the Finnfans do too, and that's now what it's called.

Stormy Monday

Most of the time I love sleeping in a loft conversion -- the warm air drifts up in the winter and you get all the light that's going, and in the summer you can open the skylight at one end and doors at the other and it's like being in a huge breezy tent. On a clear night, at the right time of month, I sleep bathed in moonlight. But when there's a gale blowing, the extractor fan clatters and the rain pounds next to your head. You don't sleep so well, and all your dreams are stormy.

The plumbing's picking up a bit, and I have a job on this morning. Not a scary there-on-your-own-out-of-your-depth one, but a difficult one. One so difficult that J the plumber is doing it himself, and I get to help. These are my favourite kinds. I make the coffee and say 'why is that doing that?' and 'where is that water coming from?', safe in the knowledge that he is in control of the situation. Or at least giving a good impression of it.

But even with these jobs, I don't sleep so well either, possibly because I have to get up a clear 90 minutes earlier than I do on an NGO X day. *This* morning however, the effing storm has made J the plumber 90 minutes late, something to do with needing to chop a fallen tree up. So I am double sleep-deprived, and still here, with a full extra hour to get nervous.

I expect I'll stop getting nervous one day. That's what normally happens.

And I think I will paint my bedroom storm colour.

joella

Emerging, blinking

Right, said BJ the on-site plumbing assessor, I can see you've got your safety boots and kneepads on, but do you have a first aid kit with you? Oh yes! I replied, nodding vigorously like the dog in the Churchill adverts.

My first aid kit contains: tampons, hand cream, Lemsip, lip balm, and plasters (the bright blue waterproof kind: if I cut myself I like people to notice), but luckily he didn't actually ask to see it.

Shall we go upstairs? I said.

I was being assessed on the refit of the bathroom in the house of Plumbing S. Theoretically, we were doing it together, but in practice, once we'd got the old one out the plumbing was mine and the sawing up of floorboards and extra pair of hands was hers. It was more stressful than I expected: there were some unexpected surprises (not of the good kind, there are never good surprises in plumbing), and the basin had to be re-piped in mains as they drink it in the night. Don't drink tank-fed water, people, unless you know your tank complies with current regulations. This one hasn't been touched since oooh, the mid 70s? Think dead bat. Think fungus.

The deal was that she got her bathroom fitted for the cost of new copper so I could remake more pipework than you would normally bother with (to be assessable the pipework had to be taken back to one hot and one cold pipe entering the room) and agreeing to take lots of 'evidence' photos of me (here's Jo tightening an isolation valve! Here she is with her blowtorch! Here she is drilling a hole with ear defenders on!). I got J the plumber to come and give me reassurance (he is technically overseeing all this anyway), and do the cutting into the mains bit, I was too scared even though I shouldn't have been.

Plumbing S was anxious, which made me more anxious. I don't think she thought we could do it. But we could. Nonetheless, I was still bricking it when BJ the assessor turned up on Tuesday morning. What if he spotted that my fire extinguisher was for the wrong kind of fire? What if he saw that we'd notched away a bit of one of the floorboards to make up for the fact that the WC feed was a bit proud of one of the joists? What if you're not allowed to use flexi tap connectors? What if he checked the bath with a spirit level and saw it was just over the line?

He stood in the middle of the room, looked around, and asked me a couple of questions about continuity bonding and back-siphoning. Then he said, well, this looks great. You can be very pleased with this. He sounded, if anything, mildly surprised, but in a happy to be surprised sort of way. And he went off downstairs to do his paperwork while we carried on fitting the toilet.

There was no stopping me after that, and it was all done by the end of the day (well, all the plumbing, there's still tons of other stuff to do), freeing me up for a lovely evening in the lovely Cricketers with some lovely men.

I'm still tired, though. Takes it out of you, this plumbing lark.

joella

Inside information

As I am a) a bit geeky and b) a bit anxious, I read P&HE Magazine from cover to cover. It's more interesting than you might think. No really, it is.

So I knew about this baby scalding case a while ago. The mainstream reporting on it is a bit wonky, which is understandable, as what happened (or at least what the plumbing industry body thinks happened) is a little complex to explain.

But let me try, in case you have a water storage cistern in your loft and a small child (or a large child, or yourself) in a bedroom under it and this story has worried you.

The water was not heated in the loft, but, like most stored hot water, in a hot water cylinder, probably in an airing cupboard. Most hot water cylinders have two ways of heating the water. The main way is via a coil, which circulates hot water from the gas boiler, but for back up or top up there is an immersion heater, which is powered by electricity and works much like a kettle element. You turn on the immersion heater and the water heats up until it reaches a certain temperature, when the thermostat turns it off.

If there is no gas then there might just be an immersion heater. This is a pretty expensive way to heat water, especially if the cylinder isn't well insulated, but it does happen quite a lot.

Cylinders heated in either of these ways are vented. As the water heats, it expands, and there is a pipe up into the loft space to allow for expansion. This ends over a cold water storage cistern (tank). This cistern generally stores water for the cold taps, though these can also be fed directly from the mains, and also feeds cold water into the hot water cylinder as hot water is drawn off via the hot taps. If steam rises up the pipe, it will condense and drip into the cold water cistern. But cold water is being replaced all the time as hot or cold water is used, so that water should stay pretty cold.

Unless the immersion heater is on and the thermostat fails. In which case, over time, that water will get hotter and hotter. The water in the cylinder will boil, go up the vent pipe, condense into the cistern, more water will be drawn into the cylinder from the cistern, and it will go round and round. In extreme circumstances, if no water is drawn off (which would bring cold water into the cistern from the mains), the whole system could reach scalding temperature.

Which is obviously potentially lethal. *However* even if that happened, if your storage cistern is compliant with the Water Regulations, which stipulate what material it should be made out of, what type and size of platform it should be sitting on, and what kind of covering it should have, then it should not fail in the way that this one did. This one was apparently on too small a platform, and was overlapping its edges. This doesn't matter if it's not hot, but once the water heated up, the plastic warped and the whole thing flipped, with dreadful consequences for the baby sleeping underneath it.

So, brothers and sisters. Don't ignore a dodgy thermostat, is the easiest thing to do. And make sure your plumber isn't like some of the guys on my course, who didn't write their names on the front of their copies of the Water Regs to make it easier to sell them on when the course was finished. You know, like doctors sell their anatomy books. They'll never need *them* again, right?

Just felt I needed to say that.

joella

Blair Witch Mystique

My newest Facebook Friend (whom I have actually known for 18 years: I am thinking that, like Eskimos and snow, or Northerners and bread rolls, we need more words for friend) told me that my profile photo made me look like I was in the Blair Witch Project. I was actually pretty chuffed.

I was wearing the same woolly hat (which used to be my mum's) last Monday night when J the plumber came to pick me up for a couple of evening jobs. I'm not sure you'll need the hat, he said, but you look very cute in it.

And it was on my head again this morning when I pitched up in Didcot feeling like shit, but not enough like shit to let the side down. I got in the door, worked out what was missing, and said to G, who was already assembling kitchen units: 'arse, I forgot my blowtorch'. The customer was still in her pyjamas, as we'd arrived surprisingly early, and she grinned from ear to ear and said 'now I've never heard a woman say *that* before'. Yeah, I said, we're normally very good at remembering them. But I was grinning too.

joella

Oh yeah, *and*...

The leak from the shower onto the stairs was Not Fixed by my optimistic efforts with the silicone sealant gun. So it's probably leaking from the waste pipework rather than the shower tray (as my efforts with the silicone sealant gun were fairly robust). So we might as well move house. It's that or take a claw hammer to the ceiling above the stairs. Either way, it's going to be grievous. Arse.

joella

Pipework and Potter

Nestling in my wallet is a cheque for £700 from J the plumber. It's my first proper plumbing money. I don't want to cash it, I want to frame it.

I am of course still running at a massive net loss, if you count the cost of the course, the cost of the tools, the money I haven't been earning at NGO X since I went part time at the end of last year, the massive mobile phone bills I have run up ("no, it's still leaking, what do I do now?"). And if you knew how many hours I worked to earn that £700 you might think I was bonkers. I know some people do. Hell, quite often *I* do. So I wouldn't blame you.

But I did it my way. So I look at that cheque, and I smile.

And the £700 doesn't cover whatever it is I may have earnt this week plumbing in a giant vegetable steamer in a pub kitchen in Abingdon (the job that was flooded out last week). I was doing the pipework, J was doing the drainage, and S was doing the electrics. We were working alongside the staff, who were preparing lunch. It could have been awful, but it wasn't: everyone working in the kitchen was Eastern European, and they were considerate to a fault. There was a moment when I was perched on top of a large, temporarily relocated fridge with an SDS drill -- the drill was vibrating, the fridge was shaking underneath me, sweat was dripping into my eyes and waitresses were squeezing past like nothing untoward was happening. One of the chefs did squeeze me on the leg at one point, but it was a fairly pointless exercise, as I had my kneepads on.

Later, I was curled up behind the fridge fitting the non-return valve and the appliance isolator, swearing gently and melting slowly (it's a long time since I worked in a pub kitchen... they are really fucking hot) when J appeared above me. Leave that, he said, it's lunchtime. And we sat outside for half an hour with a platter of sandwiches and our flasks of coffee. I love it when someone tells me to take lunch. I love going through doors marked Private. I love it when my pipework comes together. And I love knocking off at 3 because the job's done.

So there was plenty of time to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . Unlike Beth, I was wrong about Snape (well, not wrong, but far from right). But I was right about Dumbledore, if not quite for the right reasons. I found its style as bloated and heavy-handed as most of its predecessors' -- especially the last chapter, which is almost unforgivably trite -- but it remains (sorry Charlie) a fantastic story on many levels and in many ways. Here's to the Free Elf (he was always my favourite).

joella

More money than sense

Some people don't know they're born. A couple of weeks ago I heard about a rented house in Oxford where the tenant managed to drop her toilet cistern lid, smashing the basin, cracking the toilet bowl *and* damaging the bath. Impressive. J got the refit job, and last week passed it on to me. Start with the basin, he said, seeing as she's already had that off for you.

So this morning I got up, loaded my tools, my boots, my drill, my pipe benders and my various plumbing substances into the car, drove to Berinsfield to pick up the taps, connectors and isolation valves that J had left for me on top of the guinea pig cage; drove to the plumber's merchants to pick up a basin, a waste, a trap and a pedestal, drove to the letting agents to pick up the keys, and drove to the house in question.

Where I couldn't get in, because none of the keys fit. It turns out the tenant lost her keys, so got a locksmith out to change the locks, and didn't leave a copy with the letting agent. Oh, and then went back to the US on holiday, leaving a leaky pipe (presumably something disturbed by her bathroom smashing) dripping into the downstairs study. And her mobile number is unobtainable, maybe she lost that too.

What a spectacular waste of time and space she must be. The job sheet says 'please attend urgently'. Well I would, I said as I dropped the keys back, if I could get through the bloody door. I was extremely pissed off. But on the bright side I had a free day, and I will be able to occupy the moral high ground with the letting agents for at least the next couple of encounters. So I went to buy some posh French cakes and took them round to see my friend C, who conveniently lives round the corner from the letting agents and is home on maternity leave. Then I drove home. And now there's a sink in the shed. Thank god I didn't pick the whole lot up in one go, though I still haven't worked out how to get a bath into a car. J says I can borrow his Land Rover. I'm not sure how to get *myself* into a Land Rover. But I haven't told him that.

Moving on, I am wanting the new White Stripes album *a lot*. Which should pose no great logistical problem, but I tell you what does: does anyone have an mp3 or aac of Hippy Chick by Soho (released 1990, samples How Soon Is Now)? It's not on iTunes, it's not on allofmp3, it's not on last.fm, it *might* be on emusic but I never outstayed my free trial, it might be in a number of other places but none which don't look dodgy. I know Mr B has it, but I seem to remember that was vinyl... any thoughts?

Some brave new world this is...

joella

Bloodied but unbowed

On Wednesday, I did a full day's managing of information and then drove back to the bathroom of the ex-husband of Plumbing S to solder the new heating pipes and let the electrician in. J the plumber turned up at 10.30pm. The electrician left at 11.30. We were there till 1.30. I was starting to see things. I woke up at five panicking slightly, so I got up, got dressed and went back there. I did another 12 hours, then I left for my Plumbing Class Night Out (of which more later). It still wasn't finished. J the plumber went in later to sort out the final bits. He called it the bathroom from hell, and he should know.

What was so evil about the bathroom of the ex-husband of Plumbing S?

1. Incomplete basin: it needed legs, which it didn't have, so we had to build a frame. Also in a different place to the old basin, and once the frame was in the floor couldn't come up, so lots of jiggling round fitting pipes through little holes.
2. Incomplete basin taps: no fixing nut, no little grommet thing for the waste lever.
3. Crap basin waste: not enough thread for the S bend to seal, which meant the S bend washer had to be cut down with a hacksaw. Nice.
4. 'Non-applicable' WC - back to the wall pan with wall hanging cistern. J managed to fit it in the end but not before he'd threatened to take it back to the shop that sold it to the ex-husband of plumbing S and 'throw it through the fucking window and say "you fucking fit it"'.
5. Cheap and nasty pre-fitted siphon and float valve which pissed water everywhere and had to be taken apart and re-fitted.
6. Wall-mounted bath taps and shower bar which will need to be taken off for tiling (and the tiles are stone and about 10mm thick) but which had no fixings of their own so needed to be supported by rigid pipework. *You* try designing rigid pipework which can be moved back 10mm. It's not impossible but it's a pain in the arse.
7. P-shaped bath: needed to be installed exactly 542mm off the floor to accommodate the side panel. Floor was made of old, often-soaked and much messed about with tongue and groove chipboard which could in no way be described as either flat or level.
8. Heated towel rail which fit too close to the wall to take standard radiator valves, on a different wall to the original radiator.

And that was just the plumbing, never mind the electrics, which had the electrician by turns baffled and really bloody annoyed. It nearly killed me. At five to six on Thursday I came over all funny and realised my ability to hit things hard had been premenstrually enhanced. There was still no toilet. I rang J and said 'right, I'm off, there are some things a girl can't do in the garden'. 'How much do I owe you?' he said. 'A week in the sun,' I replied.

At home I threw all my clothes into the washing machine and legged it upstairs for painkillers, san-pro, a good scrub and a bit of mascara, then I jumped on my bike and headed off into town for my Plumbing Class Night Out. It was very strange but lots of fun, we went to the pub, then for a curry, then to the pub again. I was a bit manic, I fear, but I did get the chance to tell J the stores manager than it was terrifying at first and he was a big part of making it less terrifying. I also had the pleasure of seeing Plumbing S drinking a pint. I don't think she's ever done that before. I'm not sure she'll do it again.

We broke up at the Head of the River at 11.30 and I realised my back bike light wasn't working. I had also had four pints. I decided it was too risky to cycle through town. Also too risky to cycle down Abingdon Road and over Donnington Bridge. And I really couldn't be arsed to walk. I know, I thought, I'll go down the towpath.

I balanced at the top of the slope down onto it from Folly Bridge thinking 'now, is it sensible for a drunk woman on her own to cycle down the river at this time of night?'. Then I thought 'fuck it', released my brakes and swooped down into the darkness.

And it was magical. The river was as still as glass, the moon was out, the swans drifted by asleep in mid-stream. It was dark and silent and peaceful and warm and glorious. I started the day feeling tiny and anxious. I ended it feeling invincible.

joella

The female of the species

Last night, I Handed My Plumbing Folder In. All my assignments have been appropriately assessed, all my methods have been adequately stated, and all my achievements have been acceptably recorded. This one is my favourite.

So, I said to B the assessor, when will I be Qualified*? Well, he said, the IV (Internal Verifier) needs to approve your work, and then you'll get your certificate. That'll take a couple of months, though it might be a bit longer for you, because I've chosen your folder to send off to the EV (External Verifier).

Oh, I said. Is my folder special? (I have been pretty much top of the class in the theory stuff, but when it comes to the practical stuff I am precise-but-slow: average, really, if on the desirable side of average).

Well Jo, he said, not wanting to be sexist or anything, but you are a female.

Go on, I said.

Well, he went on, we've only had about 10 females get through the course. And you and S, you're about the only ones who've finished it on time and with no problems. You've done really well! Your folder is fantastic!

I squinted up at the light and thought back over the last two years. I decided to take this comment on my (unremarkable if you disregard my sex) performance in the sense in which it was intended. At one level I have found his combination of surprise and amusement quite hard to handle, but at another he has come along and used his (not inconsiderable) brute force pretty much on request whenever more brute force than I can muster has been required, and at yet another I believe his perceptions of women have genuinely, if slowly, shifted. You have to hold onto that.

I beamed at him. Thanks B, I said. Are you proud of yourself? he said. Oh yes, I replied. And I am. But one thing, I carried on, stop calling us females. We are women. If you're talking about human beings, female is an adjective. Lose the word.

I've been wanting to say that since September 2005. But I did at least say it. Some battles you can only fight when you know you've half won them: my pipework speaks for itself, and my knowledge of the Water Regulations is unmatched.

I don't know if any of this will make a difference to those women who come after me, but I like to think that Plumbing S and I softened the place up a bit. The whole atmosphere has a macho reek which will take some challenging, but to be honest that's far more down to the students than the teachers. B is one of a couple of them who didn't quite come to terms with our presence, but J the stores manager never seemed to have the tiniest issue with it, D the theory teacher toned down his jokes and never made us feel less than legitimate in the classroom (and also I think liked having people who always remembered their coloured pencils and did their homework), and BJ the leadwork teacher was old school courteous, called us ladies, and took extra time to make sure our welding was as neat as we wanted it.

For our part I think we handled ourselves well -- we laughed a lot but never giggled, we asked for help when we needed it but never expected special treatment, and we supported each other brilliantly. I was the one who remembered all the facts, made most of the decisions, and planned assignments meticulously, while S, in pink trousers and with pink flowery tools, got stuck in without a second thought. Between us we had it nailed, and we finished the course within a few hours of each other (her folder is in the photo because it's not quite ready to hand in yet).

Genderwise, I was heavily outnumbered at both school and university, but never at anything like this level. It had its dodgy moments, but on the whole it was a blast - there's nothing I like more than breaking moulds. Especially if you can do it without scoring cheap points.

joella

*Though I am not a properly Qualified plumber till I get my NVQ, and that's a different kettle of fish (and a different folder) altogether.

You can't have a cupboard if there ain't no wall

Ah, in late spring a young-ish woman's thoughts turn to Neil Young.

I don't really like driving except when I'm by myself, I more or less know where I'm going, the shadows are long, the traffic is light, the music is loud and the windows are down. Then I love it.

It was best of all when I still had my 2cv. There weren't many songs you could hear with the roof off and both cylinders roaring, but the ones that made it through were the best songs in the world. And one of my best tapes had Ragged Glory on one side and Nothing's Shocking on the other.

I parted with Cherry five years or so back, and I left the tapes with her - the rain used to drip through her cassette deck so I don't think they would really have worked in any other setting. But I still think driving is a time for the familiar, not for the strange, and for the epic, not for the fey.

Tonight I drove out into Oxfordshire after work to help fit a bath in a bungalow in Carterton. I was tired before I started, and completely knackered afterwards (though strangely manic once I got home, hence stupid late blogging). I should have resented it, or at least part of me should. But instead I got a perfect late May sky, with the sun shafting down through the clouds, framing half an hour of contemplation set to Neil Young's Unplugged.

Left me helpless, helpless, helpless.

But in a good way.

joella

Grinner on the roof

Grinner on the roof
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

How happy am I to have finished my leadwork? This isn't quite as big a grin as the one on the photo in the assessment folder, but still gives a fair indication.

As anyone who knows their way round a bending stick could attest, my leadwork isn't actually very good, unlike my pipework, which isn't bad at all. But I don't intend to do it ever again, so I don't really care. The best bit was getting to wear a special purple coat (seventeen sizes too big) and a welding visor. It reminded me of the white coats and safety specs we got to wear in the chemistry labs in the sixth form. I always felt cool in a lab coat.

In other news, check out this cat in an ambulance story. I love our public services.

joella

PS and (as a result) the best lolcat I've ever seen

Lead in my pencil

'So you cut it there, and there,' said J the plumbing technician this evening, 'and then you put it up on the chimney and beat it vigorously'.

There must have been something in my expression, because what actually happened was I did the cutting, then held it in place while he did the vigorous beating part. Leadwork is so primitive. It really is about hitting metal with sticks.

I was very grateful for the help, it's the hitting with sticks bit I find most difficult. Cutting I got the hang of once someone introduced me to the left-handed snips, and my welding, on a good day, looks as it should.

It's odd isn't it, I said, that we spend weeks grappling with bending sticks and flat dressers and oxy-acetylene torches and shave hooks, then just as they stop feeling entirely alien in your hands you finish your chimney set and never touch the stuff again.

Well, he said, it's a dying art.

It is. It's dirty and heavy and poisonous and heavy and difficult and did I say heavy, but it's a remarkable material to work with. If you know what you're doing, you can make it do anything you want, as the rooftops of Oxford attest. Time was it was part of what plumbers did (the trade is named after it, after all) but now it's a specialist thing roofers do, and it just remains in plumbing courses for legacy reasons.

It will go soon, I expect, and I don't think anyone will miss it. But I guess I'm glad I've had the chance to have a go on it. Most of the time it makes you feel puny and/or all thumbs, but when you tap something round a corner and it goes exactly where it should, or you finish a perfect welded seam and lift your mask off like her out of Flashdance, you begin to see the point...

joella