HOW TO ENGAGE THE SERVICES OF A PLUMBER. -Call the plumber after lunch on friday or before a bank holiday weekend. Christmas Eve is best. - Hassle him to fit you in. New baby, poorly or elderly family member etc. - Estimate the time and ease of the job. (They like that) explain that it is only a five minute job that you could do yourself if “only you had the time.” - Negotiate the smallest, most inconvenient window of booking opportunity. “I have to go to the gym” or some other far more important engagement than your blocked toilet or broken boiler, will smooth this over. - Ask for a fixed price. (Even if its a burst pipe or blocked drain) When the plumber refuses to be nailed down, some jovial comment like “I should have been a plumber”will keep the negotiation nice and light. - Tell him that you will run it by your wife and call back in five. - Call ten other plumbers who are too busy and then phone back two hours later expecting the same time slot. If he does actually answer the phone again and arrives, be sure to be in the shower, still on the way home from work or hide in the Kitchen pretending you dont know he is there, despite twitching the curtains every five minutes and muttering to yourself that “he’s late” even though you are only ten minutes into the 4 hour time slot arranged. - Show him the job which does not vaguely resemble what you described over the phone. - Ask him to move his van. Someone needs to get their car out and clearly cant wait the “five minutes” the job will take. - Show him where the problem is. Explain how you cant find the key to the side gate and he will have to lug his equipment all the way around. - Now is probably a good time to point out that the problem appeared on Monday last week but you thought “it had cured itself”. - Embark on a tedious, long winded story dropping names of people he could not give a toss about, and every completely unrelated event leading to this moment in time, starting from when you moved in 18 years ago. - Share your half cocked theory on what is going on. (“Air in the pipes” perhaps?) Needs bleeding maybe? - Apologise for the 20 years of piss-cheese build up on and around your toile https://www.instagram.com/p/CDoNKjFp9c3/?igshid=1596ysp2fu0f6