How I enjoy the run up to Christmas. What could be nicer than a long winter afternoon spent writing Christmas cards in my cosy flat while outside the snow falls, deep and crisp and even?
The truth is I was furtively writing cards at my desk at work today and managed to post at least one of them minus a stamp. The snow is slushy and brown and wet and is causing me unbelievable stress.
At work today I got an email from Traybake.
"Complete DISASTER! Water gushing everywhere. Talk later."
I felt sick and immediately tried to phone TB on both his land line and mobile. No reply. I was imagining the water cut off, no heating and serious damage to fixtures and fittings.
Half an hour later he rang me to tell me that the pipe which leads to the outside tap had burst.
This incident was so serious that TB had to come upstairs as soon as I got home, for a restorative cup of tea and a slab of Green and Black chocolate. As the GYS once pointed out, TB is capable of making a melodrama out of the most trivial of incidents so when there is an actual crisis you can imagine how long it took him to explain it all to me.
"......so then I had to go round to the shop and the guy, he was gnawing on a bone when I got there, he says 'cor blimey, I dunno, you could try Richard' and then I rang Richard and he said he'd come round and then eventually a pair of D'Angelo and Stringer Bell lookee likees turned up, and the water was gushing out like Niagara Falls, and the pair of them were soaked within seconds, and they couldn't work out where the water was coming from and they twiddled every knob in the house including my .........."
The long and the short of it was they managed to stop the flow of water and they are coming back tomorrow to finish off the job. TB was particularly stressed as his flight to Ireland is supposed to be early tomorrow morning from Heathrow. While he was up here we checked the Aer Lingus site and not surprisingly his flight has been cancelled. Mine is on Thursday with Ryanrobbingbastardsair and is from Stansted so I am hopeful that it will not be affected.
This Christmas is all about disrupted travel and people being in the wrong place and unable to get around in the usual way.
In Ireland one sister was forced to take the bus from Enniskillen to Antrim rather than drive, another had to get a train from Belfast to Tralee (all went smoothly apart the fact that the tram she was on, while travelling between stations in Dublin, crashed). London Sister is in Ireland and worried about not getting back in time for Christmas.
I have a horrible feeling that there is more to come.
The next flight TB could get was late on Christmas Eve. As a precaution he is going out tomorrow to buy christmas dinner ingredients in case he gets stuck here. He better buy enough for two.
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Goodness, how awful it all sounds. I do hope you get on your flight safely and that it actually takes of, flies, and lands in the right spot....
I will cross my fingers for you.
x
Posted by: fifi | December 22, 2010 at 12:11 PM
Thanks fifi. Hope you have a very good Christmas x
Posted by: ganching | December 23, 2010 at 12:33 AM