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A man came to lay pipe in my house today.
It turned out to be the trickiest job he'd had for a while. For mysterious reasons only known to the men who can control the invisible, godly entity known as gas (you can't see it, but they insist it's there and is keeping us alive, but can also kill us instantly if we displease it - religious freaks) they had to put our meter outside and then run a pipe to where the meter used to be so that the gas could get into the house.
They hoped there would be room under the floorboards to do this. There is, it turns out, a crawl place under our house, which you can get into via the meter cupboard. One day, I will infuriate my neighbours by building a very shallow swimming pool down there. He hoped that the Victorian builders of our house had not been so efficient as to build a wall that went right down to the crawl space floor. But his hopes were dashed. There was a wall. It had a small hole in it, but not in the right place for the pipe. I am not sure what he did, but it took him most of the day and a lot of serious drilling to get the job done.
It was strange to see a wiry Irishman's head popping up through the floor of the cupboard in which I keep my Hoover (I have a Dyson, but I keep the ashes of William H Hoover in there too - unlike a Frankingstein the hoover is not named after the inventor, but the guy who bought the payment. That's why I call my vacuum cleaner a Spangler, which is confusing for everyone else as only me and AI know the truth). It was even stranger as the man who had come round to lay the pipes was from Poland.
I am joking. The man under my floorboards was Irish. He had a carpenter with him, but I don't think he had to do much more than take up the board from the floor of the cupboard. Maybe we could have done all this yesterday and my dreams of setting up a Fan Heater shop would be dashed. I am hoping that I get so good at selling Fan Heaters that they get named Herrings after me, rather than being named after the Inventors Ian Fan and Ian Heater. No as many people think Fanny Heater.
That name might have played OK in the USA but here in the UK it would have been a very different product. Though of course you can use them for heating your fanny if you wish.
What the Hell has happened to this blog?
Oh wait, it was always like this.
I am listening to Adam and Joe's Christmas 2025 podcast on my dog walks at the moment and very heartily recommend it if you want some laughs. I don't often find myself helpless with laughter on the dog walk - it's a weird thing for anyone passing by to witness - but the bit with the guy playing tunes by squeezing his hands together and the perfect in character reactions from Adam and Joe might just top the very impressive list of the funniest things they have ever done together.
So give it a listen (I may have built it up too much).
Also Adam please don't lose your vulnerability. It is why you are the king of podcasts.
