The Diary
of
Anne Ku

26 September 2000 Tuesday

cloudy, cold, drizzle

PLUMBER'S PLOT

The dripping from my bathtub tap seems to have gotten worse. Overnight, the bowl collected enough water to flush the toilet twice. It just doesn't make sense to pay metered water which drips from inefficient taps.

Thames Water, my water supplier, was unhelpful. Their Home Service was equally useless. So I called a local plumber, who was able to come by and give me a free estimate over the weekend.

Peter the plumber quoted me a fixed price for a fixed job. "I'll have to change the washers, but since these are old taps, I'm not sure if this will fix the problem. You may have to replace the entire tap system." This made me nervous.

"How much would it cost to do THAT?"

"It's going to be very expensive. I'll have to take the toilet out as well. Otherwise I won't be able to reach the plumbing."

So I thought to myself, while you're at it why don't you take out the entire bathtub - and replace it with a six foot cast iron tub. In fact, why don't you rip everything out and replace it with a grand, 5-star hotel-style bathroom suite?

"Replacing the bathtub and toilet will take one week and cost you almost two thousand pounds. You won't be able to take a bath or shower all week. But I could fix the toilet back each day."

Today he came to change the washers. The taps stopped dripping. It took a mere fifteen minutes. I sadly parted with my forty pounds. Perhaps I'm in the wrong profession.

YESTERDAY

TOMORROW

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