Pipework

My Sort of Step Son Matthew rang yesterday morning at twenty to eleven and asked "Have you got Mac with you?" I looked towards my pride and my boy who was painting at the kitchen table dressed in an old pillow case. "Yes" I answered. "Are you doing anything.....major.....at the moment?" Matt continued. "No" I said, looking towards my nearly empty cup of tea wistfully. "Good, can you do me a favour and go to that plumbing place you have near you and get me a length of copper piping?"

That's not the strangest request I've ever received on a Friday morning but it was up there with the best of them.

It appeared that Matt was laying laminate flooring in Lydia's kitchen (Lydia having "inherited" the house from her housemate Julia who loves her new job in York so much she's decided to stay there) and, whilst ripping up the old lino, "nicked" the water pipe with his screwdriver. He was currently holding a "wodge of tea towels" onto the offending hole whilst waiting for the pipes to drain down. "Does Lydia know about this?" I asked suspiciously, already planning the quickest route to Beckenham. "She knows about the laminate flooring, but not about the pipe" said Matt. Somewhat soggily.

The place near me was shut, so I drove off and hoped I happened upon a plumbers merchant before I reached Beckenham. Fifteen minutes later I was being leered at by Bearded Man in the Plumbing Shop as I arrived at his grubby and cracked counter with Mac in tow. Thoughts of Mya's recent post ran through my mind as I took in the busty blonde (Miss March) on the calendar over by the box of bath plugs. She was holding a U-bend and grinning inanely wearing a wet look gold bikini. Mac took off to inspect the toilet bowls stacked over by the door. I asked for copper piping. Bearded Man shouted through to "Kev" in the back room. "How long do you want it?" Bearded Man asked me as he investigated the contents of his nose with his left forefinger. "For as long as my friend has the kitchen" I said imperiously.

I rang Matt and barked "How long do you want this pipe?" at him, hopefully giving the impression that I did this sort of thing every day. "They'll only sell it in feet, one'll do" came the reply, along with a complaint that "the sodding system isn't draining down". "Just a foot" I said snootily as Kev appeared from the back room. "Lady wants 12 inches" Bearded Man leered with a throaty laugh.

If it wasn't for the fact that I had visions of Matt drowning in Lydia's kitchen and could see Lydia's horrified face when she came home from a hard day of organising events to find an indoor paddling pool, Bearded Man would have needed a highly skilled medical team to remove the copper piping from the orifice I had in mind.