Winter wonders
When is the best time to have your water tank spring a leak? The answer is, of course, ‘never’, but probably the worst time is at night, at sub-zero temperatures in a pandemic. We were ready for bed, waiting to watch a relaxing TV programme with our cups of cocoa (not really!) when Mr T went to put his towel in the airing cupboard. The carpet was wet. ‘It must be our hot water bottles stored there,’ we thought, but we have not used them for years. ‘We must have put something away wet.’ We would not put anything in the airing cupboard dripping with water. ‘Condensation?’ We had never had trouble before. We ran out of our denial tactics when we saw a cold trickle down the big copper cylinder. There was a leak. We decided against holding our finger in the hole like the little Dutch boy. Instead, I checked the list of emergency plumbers online. The third one picked up. They would come – for a huge call out price and an unbelievable amount per hour. I booked them. To ch...