Specifically, mine and it’s two.
I have touched on this previously. I do believe everyone has a number which works for them.
On your third family sized block of chocolate you may well ask: Is three my lucky number? Or, possibly: Izh thlee ma luchky nuggber (slorry, dwibbling a bit)? And it could well be, until you get on the scales next morning and find, no, it isn’t.
I have found my number by noticing the one that keeps recurring in my life in significant, difficult, highly inconvenient junctures. It’s two.
Troubles of a certain sort do not come along singly for me. If you’ve got the tools out to deal with one it’s hardly worth putting them away, not just yet.
This time plumbing.
The OH called me to see if I could detect where the water was coming from, that was flooding the cabinet under the washbasin in his bathroom.
Yes, we have two bathrooms. I created two when we had the building work done and would heartily recommend a second bathroom as a marital aid. In the sense of remaining married. The joy created by getting in the shower when you want to, as opposed to when someone else is finished, is a joy that does not wane for someone brought up with an indoor bathroom as a luxury and bath night once a week on a Saturday so you could go to Church clean in the morning.
It was was so ingrained and normal for everyone, that in the teenage years, out dancing on a Saturday night, I always felt as if I ought to be doing something else. It feels ludicrous now that my father designed a house in 1964 with a flat roof, one bathroom and no possibility of a shower using a header tank.
The world has moved on and the delight of two bathrooms and two electric showers does not fade.
So when the OH called me to have a squizz to see if I could see where the water was coming from, I gave him a bit of A4, to dribble on, diagnosed a leak at the front and called the plumber.
The plumber bought a new trap and installed it, which the OH had to pay for temporarily as we are skint. In particular I am skint, having just paid for the pruning of the neighbour’s tree that was blocking my light, the removal of my dead little tree out the front and the installation of two others out of pots they were stuck in and into the ground. That’s 2X2 at a cost of 2X £300. I saved the money while the OH was on holiday by easily reducing the grocery bill to £20 a week. Vegetables are a lot cheaper to eat than dead animals. So I paid for the trees with large amounts of actual saved cash and felt very virtuous. Subsequently out of cash, I ate residual vegetables and the OH emptied the freezer.
At which point, naturally, the washing machine became incontinent. There it sat in a puddle, looking old.
To be fair I think we have had it for about eight years.
Thank goodness for pay day on Thursday when we shall be off to the local electrical goods retailers to find a washing machine and someone to fit it and take away the old one.
Help twice, because we are getting old. The time before last that we had a new domestic large appliance the OH borrowed a truck and we did the driving, delivery and removal and fitting.
But now, if we don’t eat much for the next few weeks, joined on to the last few weeks of not eating much, we can, maybe, afford someone else to do all the effort.
And that should be it for a bit. I hope.
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