The lazy doth protest too much, methinks

The Crumbling Villa continues its slow and inexorable descent into chaos, in full compliance with the Laws of Thermodynamics. As the landlord’s only apparent function it to receive his rent each year, it is incumbent upon the Goat to deal with repairs and maintenance.

GAMI (Get A Man In) is sometimes preferable to DIY (Damage It Yourself), such as when the work involves split-unit air conditioning units that were originally fitted in the Ark, or when the job involves shovelling pigeon poo off the roof, but as both Beloved Wife and Goat have full-time jobs it is sometimes difficult to arrange for tradesmen to turn up when we’re not out. Especially when “We will arrive at 5pm.” often actually means “At 3pm, or tomorrow at 10:30, or maybe not at all.”

So when the plumbing went wrong a while ago, Muggins replaced the hot water tank single-handed. My other hand was busy grasping for any handhold: the ladder, window frame, stopcock… At least the new tank wasn’t half full of limestone, so weighed less than the old and leaky one: a bonus when teetering atop a stepladder in a bathroom that’s swimming with water. Did I mention that the stopcock won’t fully shut off the water; merely reduce the Niagaresque torrent to a mere dribble? And yes I did turn off the water pump.

Just last week it became the shower’s turn to malfunction. The plastic (Plastic? What were they thinking?!) screw thread attaching the shower hose to the mixer tap snapped off. Initially it looked as if the entire mixer tap assembly would have to be replaced at enormous expense and inconvenience, and then I discovered that it was possible to unscrew the remainder of the plastic fitting.

Armed with this, off I went to the Plumbers’ Central.

So this is where my laziness creeps in. I don’t want to go to the time and effort of replacing the entire tap fitting when changing the screw adaptor takes only a few seconds, so I drive all over Dubai from Ace Hardware at Festival Centre, over to Speedex on SZR, thence into Satwa. All this in the huge traffic congestion that is an inevitable consequence of rainy weather. Twenty shops, three hours and about two gallons of petrol later, I was forced to conclude that this silly little tuppeny-ha’penny fitting was indeed Not Coming In Dubai. Just as you suspected, dear Reader.

Not to worry, tomorrow is another day, and it’s a well-known fact that you can get anything in Sharjah (with the possible exceptions of booze and pork). The trouble is, no-one who knows where is telling.

So this morning I got much the same story from any number of emporia of plumbing supplies. I eventually ended up at the same shop where I bought the hot water tank. The Man asserted that the thingummy I wanted was simply not available (big surprise). So I bought a whole new mixer tap – for the wallet-crippling price of sixty dirhams.

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