Plumbing

It's been raining, again, midsummer, and for a plumber rain is just another reminder that there will always be leaks and that we shall never be dry, that this life is a vale of tears, that we evolved from the slime, from the earth's boiling soup, the bouillon of all existence, and that we shall eventually return to the same.

A rainy day is not a good day for plumber.

But then again there are really no good days in plumbing, which is something that people who are not themselves plumbers tend to forget. People tend to call blumbers when things have gone badly wrong and plumbers do not therefore tend to see human nature at its best, or the world through rose-tinted glasses. There are only so many toilets you can put your hands into before you begin to doubt the idea of human perfectibility, and there is no sunshine and no soap strong enough to cleanse a man of such doubts once he has begun to entertain them, so in middle age the wise plumber starts to specialise in kitchen and bathroom refits - work which pays better and which, if you do it right, is guaranteed to put a little smile on people's faces. A new shower unit can do wonderful things for a person's self esteem. However much trouble you might have with your shower heater unit, or your wall brackets, or your curling sealant round the shower base, it is as nothing compared with the horror of a cracked cistern and the sight of downstairs ceiling sagging like a huge pendulous breast, and a householder standing underneath it, like an idiot, with a bucket and a stick.

Sammy had never exactly been a happy plumber, but he had accepted misery as an occupational hazard. ...