What is she on about now?

It ain't half hot, but the water's not

I returned from the summer working in the UK feeling a bit hot and grubby and a late night shower proved to be a lukewarm experience at best. Not long before I went away, a new hot water heater had been fitted (that's another story) and like the house, it was the best one I'd ever had with really hot water in a short time. What had happened in my absence??

So in the morning I enquired of the cat/house sitter how long we had not had hot water. I'm afraid her standard response to anything which required information was mainly "don't know" or "no idea", although here she replied "we have" and the conversation goes me: we haven't, her : well it's warm, me: that;s the sun on the water pipes, the boiler is not lighting, didn't you notice? her: no I didn't really use the hot water, followed by some explanation about cold showers and being in the paddling pool, a pause, then : me: what about washing up? her : I didn't really cook. me: but the cats' dishes..........urgh. Mental note to self to wash again anything I think has been used, as soon as she has gone.

I should add something about the gas situation in Spain. It's bottled gas in great big orange or silver bombonas depending on which company you contract with originally. After that you get a refill from wherever sells them, or the van which delivers weekly to the door, and there is a thriving trade in empty bottles which are the only way to get a new full one by trading them in unless you start a new contract blah blah blah. There is supposed to be a regular service of the gas equipment for safety reasons which may only be carried out by request, by the company holding the contract for supply, and by a pre-booked appointment. There is also a thriving trade in "bogus gasmen" who tour the country looking for likely mugs they can browbeat into letting them in to do the service and charging what they like. Like any other scam, it has a certain measure of success, but it's well known and the word goes out when they are trying it on in an area.

So when I saw on facebook that they were indeed chancing their luck in the area, I messaged my cat/house sitter along the lines of "I'm sure you don't need reminding not to entertain them, but just letting you know they are in the area and might just call", but I got a reply I didn't expect "too late, they've already been". The "too late" indicating that she had got it into her head I was expecting them (actually it was the electricity meter reader I'd said would be coming  and the meter is outside the front door which is usually open so I thought it best to mention it) and welcomed them onto the terrace where the gas bottle sits (close to the electricity meter and the front door as it happens) with the pipes going in through the wall.

Getting a full and accurate report was never going to happen and the best I managed in the end was that she let them change something (there is definitely a new hose) but declined to pay them (thank goodness) and got alarmed when they wanted to go in the house, so phoned a friend and got her to tell them to clear off since she doesn't speak any Spanish. Not best pleased but hopefully no harm done........but then I had to ask, when there was no hot water "is this since the bogus gas men were here by any chance?". She was a bit too quick to say no, since I went away.

I naively put it down to maybe not being used had done something in the heater pipes....checked the gas bottle, not empty, checked the regulator, firmly attached, couldn't see why it wouldn't light, asked a long suffering visitor, he tried and it lit, bingo! hot water! but sadly a fluke as the next time I turned on the tap - nada. The gas just wasn't flaring up properly.

My lovely landlord has a Mr Fixit, Rafael, who duly turned up and a bit of fiddling produced the same miracle of hot water, after a week of making do with cold or at best lukewarm as the heater did try but mostly failed on a sporadic basis. He then attended to a couple of other things which needed fixing and went on his way. I turned the hot tap on. Nada. My landlord's daughter is the lawyer whose office does the contract and collects the rent, she said Rafael fixed it so if he comes again I have to pay. Despondent, I just kept trying. But things got worse.

The light in the kitchen ceiling is a decorated ceramic housing with two short fluorescent tubes in it and it was getting a bit temperamental and didn't always switch on, As it got worse I found it on because I had forgotten I tried the switch and nothing happened, but it came on later when I had gone out or to bed. Then it decided to pack up altogether. Meanwhile I am showering in cold water and washing up with the aid of the kettle. I'd been trying to eat more sensibly ie actually cook in preference to a packet of biscuits or a pile of toast, but even that was beyond a joke as the cooker is gas too and when it took an hour and a half to brown the top of a vegetable bake......well I'd had enough of this, a saucepan on a flame which was so small I might as well have been using a cigarette lighter under it, attempting to cook by the light of a bedside lamp plugged in on the worktop and washing up eventually after boiling the kettle before having a cold shower if it was not one of the days where it achieved lukewarm status.  On a day when the washing up had been with pretty warm water from the tap, I decided to dye my hair and de-fuzz my legs assuming I'd be fine for a shower to wash the lot off.

I should have known better. Head smothered in dark red dye and legs in white cream up to the knees, time to wash it off - and only cold water from the shower. Not a happy bunny and then Facebook pitched in with it's "this time last year" with me being over the moon with this lovely new house "where everything works", adding insult to injury. I didn't know whether to get cross or to cry. Such a basic thing, to have hot water, and barely a year since I'd never known if there would even BE water and I can't go back to that state of induced stress. I don't want much, just to have a proper shower, to cook and to wash up,  I heard myself whining, like the AA Milne poem about the king who just wanted a little bit of butter for his bread. So I grovelled to Judith and said there must be a problem with the gas as it's the cooker as well and now the light doesn't work, and I fix everything I can without bothering you.......(and that's another story too when I had to replace the winders on the blinds)

So back came Raf, and he turned on the heater and the cooker and tutted a lot and then he went outside and took the regulator off the gas bottle and pushed and prodded and said there was the problem, the regulator is not working. In the van, zooms off as he does to the Ferreteria (DIY, Ironmongers, absolutely brilliant places) and comes back with a new one, two minutes later there are serious flames on the cooker and the entire bank of whatever they are inside the water heater lights up. Which leaves the light, which he says is not the switch, and he's right so two new tubes and two new starters and Manolo's your uncle but only after I clean the ceramic fitting which is half covered in grease and dirt one one side of the underneath and the other has what might well be a Spanish wasp's nest in the recess.

All done and sorted. huge sigh of relief, muchas gracias Rafael, hasta luego  but not pronto I hope!

I really should be able to leave it there but I have an increasing need to know, to have an explanation, so I'm still puzzled or more like suspicious, do regulators just stop working properly or was this some kind of sabotage by the bogus gas men?? I know there is no point in even asking what exactly they did, but what I do recall is hearing how the cooker was disdained after a pizza burned, and there were signs of spaghetti burnt to the bottom of a pan. Given that the gas was so pathetic on the cooker a pizza left in all day would still not have burned, and it would have been a physical impossibility to boil water away in the spaghetti on a similar basis, my money is on the damage being done by those buggers the bogus gas men.

Let that be a lesson for the unwary...........and the absent householder. I'm off for a nice hot shower now. ,