Suresh Menon: Finding a plumber is a pipe dream

I write this in a hurry today because tomorrow I shall not be allowed to write. Not because of a public holiday, a family birthday or because it is the first day of a cricket Test match, but because it is Plumber’s Visit Day.

Not quite as celebrated as International Secretary’s Day or the Disposing of the Last Barbie Doll Day (which signifies the transition from girlhood to womanhood), it is nevertheless more important than either of these, chez Menons. Like the sighting of the first cuckoo in England, it is an event that is eagerly awaited, and with as much frequency.

As soon as you enter a new home bought with your hard-earned savings, the first thing you do is call the plumber. Not because you need his services just then, but in anticipation of the services you might need three years later.

I believe there was a person who actually got through to a plumber the first time he called, and even got him to come to his home within two days – at least that’s what the statue of this worthy event in one of our public parks says – but I find that story a bit thin. Maybe he was calling the Prime Minister, and someone misheard it as ‘plumber’.

Not since a Nobel Prize winner visited us years ago have we been so excited. My wife is taking the day off too. Neighbours have been invited over in case they want to have their photographs taken with the plumber. It will play havoc with everybody’s schedule. But that’s a small price to pay for fixing the sink, clearing the pipes and altering the condition of the water (if that sounds like major heart surgery, that is no coincidence).

Plumbers, when they finally do arrive, tend to come without important spanners and pliers and hammers. They tend to have everything except the right sizes.
Over the years we have built up a collection of plumbing tools in the fervent hope that a plumber might arrive one day. And then he would have everything he needed.

Also ready will be breakfast, lunch, dinner and whatever snacks a plumber eats in-between. This will mean he does not have to take long lunch breaks of the kind favoured by retired generals in their clubs. And if by some chance something that needs fixing starts working miraculously today, I shall take a hammer and break it so the plumber’s trip is not wasted.

“There is no greater bliss in life,” wrote the biographer Victoria Glendinning, “than when the plumber eventually comes to unblock your drains. No writer can give that sort of pleasure.”

And that is why this writer is not working tomorrow.