Sky being useless, a trip to the Doctor and no kerosene again
Well it’s five or so in the afternoon and I stink of kerosene, my hands are freezing and the room is even colder.
Got to go home a little earlier tonight as I had another doctor appointment with the lovely Doctor Shashi. I got there ten minutes early, got in straight away and Dr. Shashi immediately declared my blood tests as being completely fine with no problems at all. We had a great chat about good food being better than supplement, fitbits, my running, giving up smoking and my general fittyness being been than other people of my age. Generally very reassuring considering that I didn’t feel at all well last week.
Anyway I left and went straight back to my house to find no builders but immediate evidence of them having been there. Stepped out of the car, the curtains were down in the main reception rooms, the pile of rubble was bigger and there were two dado rails in the garden. I ventured inside and there was now a foot round hole between the living room and dining room with a large steel through it supporting the wall to the outside that was about to come out.
The upstairs steel lintel showed little sign of progress but it did have some extra cement in the gaps around it, evidencing that it probably had been propped up further and then secured with this extra filling. Obviously lots had been done but there was little to show for it, the huge drama about to come with the knocking down of the outside walls and the communicating walls, can’t wait.
Actually it took me ages for the penny to drop but there was one big improvement, the acro-props had gone. Basically what it looked like to me was that the roof was now self-supporting, the steels were doing their job and it was all funky.
I switched on the heating and headed upstairs to phone Sky as instructed over the weekend by the helpful James. Got straight through to the lovely Barry and asked if I could speak to James – as per instructions. Barry said that it wasn’t necessarily possible to get through to your operator of choice and that he’d look into the problem. Much routing around and Barry (who refused to acknowledge he’d ever spoken to me before – he had) said that the last entry they had referring to me was back in February and that – would you believe it – my account had been closed. Also there was no evidence of me having spoken to James and actually Barry didn’t even know of a James there.
Barry said he’d look into matters but he’d didn’t sound hopefully, after 26 minutes on the phone he asked if I could hang up so as he could test the line and then he’d ring me back. Meanwhile while waiting on the phone there was a commotion outside and a small but perfectly formed herd of sheep cut through the alley behind the house, hey I am in the country aren’t I.
I was waiting for him to get back in touch and I realised that my heating wasn’t on, I must have ran out of fuel, it doesn’t rain???
Barry got back in touch and acknowledged that he had spoken to me a number of weeks back and asked how I’d got on with the BT engineer who’d been dispatched by him for a Friday morning slot, I explained he’d not turned up till Monday morning when I was at work after taking a fruitless day off on the previous Friday.
Barry actually suggested I look around for another service provider at one point, well that’s not too clever is it, they can’t solve my problem so go somewhere else. It wouldn’t be a bad suggestion but they’ve got me over a barrel up here, basically I would still have to go through BT Openview whatever flavour of service provider I had. I was really pleasant to Barry who was wonderful (he was scheduled to finish at 4 but worked through to 4:30) and shared the complement with me for my patience and good wit (his works, was it whit?? J) but I didn’t like the suggestion of going elsewhere. I mean I’ve spent hours and hours and hours trying to get this sorted and although I’m sure Barry didn’t mean it the implication was for me to sod off as they couldn’t resolve my problem.
Anyway Barry espressed that he’s pass on the ticket and he booked me an engineer for Saturday morning, righto I’ll believe it when I see it.
As it was getting on, it was cold and I had no heating oil I had to get myself in motion. I jumped in the car headed for Simpsons fuel, bought 45 litres of kerosene in three plastic jerry cans and left a £20 deposit for the cans.
In the rain, in my three piece suit, tie and overcoat I stood on my tiptoes and poured the kerosene – in a hurry – into the tanks and suffered from splashback that smarted my eyes and tinged me with the lovely eau the heating fuel.
Jumped back in car, returned my empties, got home, gathered the dado rails from the garden and put them safely in the empty corner bedroom and used an allen key to bleed the heating to allow it to strike into life again.
Not a great day but interesting and I really did pack a bit into the two free hours I had from going home early from work.
It’s nice to know that Sky are still living up to expectations, my building work is coming on nicely, I have a clean bill of health, my house is warming up, my overcoat is covered in building dust and it reeks of kerosene and I’ve just written a blog page.
Told Clare at work about the white wallabie Wally, she swears she once saw a sheep in a dress.
It just writes itself this does.