I asked my readers last week what kind of skill YOU’D like to have around the home. Nobody actually reads my blog, so there weren’t any replies. However the stress of being totally alone all the time has steadily driven me mad, so I’m perfectly capable of pretending that I had loads of responses.
The winner was plumbing, of course. Nobody likes it when the hot water runs out, stops working, becomes busted or is just too darn hot. That last one is often neglected, but it’s been estimated that around 10% of Melbourne emergency plumber callouts are due to people who run their hand under the tap and are burned and need someone to fix the tap so it just produces pleasantly warm water. Who wants their tap to spew forth boiling water, anyway? That’s what a kettle is for, or a saucepan on the stove if you’re just that medieval.
And then what if your cold water breaks down and you can only get hot stuff? Say it’s the summer, you’re sweltering without air conditioning and you just need a glass of cold water. Too ad you didn’t get that fixed while it was still winter and/or autumn! Now you’re stuck filling up a glass with hot water and putting it in the fridge, in the hopes that you’ll be saved from this plight. But then you have to wait about half an hour before that water reaches room temperature, so no luck there. Oh, what a sad situation.
If you’d trained as a plumber you could fix all of this yourself, and feel like an expert while doing it. You’d be the pride of the neighbourhood as you go from place to place, fixing their water services for a reasonable fee, just like an actual plumber. Except you WOULD be a plumber. Melbourne needs more plumbers, I think. I haven’t had hot water for seven months.
-Archibald