Stormy May Day

Not a magnet choice Toots gets to make very often!!

I thought it was raining on Tuesday, but it is stotting off the ground today. I woke up at 4am this morning to thunder and lightning directly over our heads, and that seemed to remain the weather of choice until mid-morning.  Now it's just hammering down rather than thunder-clapping, but still, it's a day for staying inside me thinks.

Which is also what the plumber seems to think since I've not heard a peep from him.  And is annoying since we've had no hot water for the last three days due to a gas leak.  Again.  That's right, not two months since we had no hot water for almost a week, we've no hot water again - which doesn't just mean no hot baths and showers, but no hot water to fill the dishwasher or washing machine.

The day before yesterday the Don woke up to an unusually lukewarm shower.  Off he toddles to investigate and discovers that he can't relight the pilot light because there's no gas coming in to the house.  We make a call to the same house protection insurance type people who assure us a plumber will be round in 24 hours.  Yesterday the new plumber tells us we've no gas supply because it's been switched off and locked. Apparently it's quite common for Atmos, the only gas supplier in the area, to somehow notice a leak through the meter readings and then switch off a house's gas supply.  Without bothering to tell them.

So of course it's not the inlet valve bit that's leaking that was fixed last time, so it must be the 10m or so pipe that runs the length of the house and garden out into the back lane.  That pipe that is under the landscaped garden and side path and not covered by insurance.  At least that's not our problem.  What is our problem is that the old plumbing company is then instructed to fix it, and when they come round in the afternoon the guy has no record of what was done last time so has to head back to the office to find out.  But don't worry, "....we'll be back in the morning".

This is on the back of having no air conditioning a couple of weeks ago when the weather was in the high 30s.  I think the inside temperature of our house reached 32 degrees, and we were just melting.  Honestly in the last year we've needed a new dishwasher, had our washing machine fixed, our toilets majorly back up three times, the air conditioning/heating system pack in and two gas leaks.  Maybe it's not, but it feels like a lot.