PLUMBING! By Georgie's Dad.

A lot of women will understand about the whole getting the man in your life whether it be your father, husband, boyfriend, whatever to do something in your house for you that's DIY related. AN' the buggers NEVER forget it. A lot of women say the man "You never do owt around the house." Mainly because it usually is the woman who has to do all the cooking, cleaning an' laundry in these households. Man will reply with "Well I put them shelves up for ya." Yeah, you put them shelves up 4 years ago. Idiots.

Me father's also taken to a sort of shitty bribe thing that has nowt to do wi' me an' me mam at all. Me father's work has nowt to do wi' us. He does all the farm work an' outside estate maintenance, sometimes stuff in the properties too but that doesn't happen often.

This is what he does, 'cause he's too idle to make himsel' a cup of tea an' WON'T make himsel' one when there's a woman int th'ouse.

He'll say to us; "Can you mek us a quick brew then I'll go an get these sheep run through the footbath." Or summat stupid like that.

He makes it sound like if it doesn't get done, then it's our fault. Or that it's imperative we make him a cup of tea  'cause really it's our job that he's doing but we've subbed him the work. Does that make any sense?

Either way, that's what he does. Plus if you're in the house around dinner time, he'll try getting you to make him a sammich just so he doesn't have to. He's quite capable of doing it himself though. But me an' mam work to an' we very rarely have dinner we run on ciggies an' coffee. We don't have the time to be pandering around after me father. If we say "No, kinda busy going back out to work" an' not make him his tea or butty, he goes in a huff with us. I mean he actually get's a proper monk on.

But back to the DIY thing. Me mam's  had a crappy sink in her kitchen for ages now, One of them stupid cheapy plastic ones that stains. It's a 1.5 sink, has the main sink an a funny smaller one int middle next to the draining board. The big part of the sink round the plug hole has had this split in it for ages so even with the plug in, the water drains out. So mam decided she wanted a new stainless steel sink an' sent me out with me dad to B&Q one day to get one. I was there solely for the purpose of making sure me father got a good one; 'cause knowing him he'd come back with some cheap shite.

He spent most of Thursday last week measuring up where the new sink was going seeing as it was a little big bigger than the one already in. Friday was spent pissing about going to an' from Homebase an' Jewsons for kitchen worktop hacking to bits supplies. Jigsaw blades an' crap like that. That evening he started cutting but was "thwarted" by said Jigsaw blades overheating an' splintering the worktop. So then he started pissing about with a hand saw.

SATDAY was the same, 'cept he eventually managed to get the hole cut. Sunday, the sink went in. An most of Sunday was spent with me father, under the sink pissing about with the pipes.

Today, Wednesday. After several days of me father whinging under the damn sink about shitty cowboy plumbers who'd done the original work an' how they can't plumb for toffee. Christ knows what he was doing under there he spent hours cutting an' soldering, more trips to Homebase to buy more plumbing shit an'... whinging. Yes Wednesday. We finally got a real plumber in to sort the pipes. Me father reckoned he had connected up the cold water but never got round to the hot 'cause the cold was giving him grief.

Plumber comes in, there was a bit of noise. He was barely here half an hour. Had both the hot water an' cold water hooked up without having to use flexipipes, bazillions of pipe couplings, yadda yadda. He even said to us he might not have everything he needed in his van to hook it all up 'cause he'd been busy with loads of other jobs. But he still did it. An' here is his handy work.

All he did was put in a new joint for the hot, an' he bent a bit of pipe for the cold. Easy. An I think he didn't have to get a bunch of couplings/joints out his van anyway, 'cause of me father's billion an' one trips to DIY shops, he got pretty much everything anyway. Funny thing is me father has all the gear for doing this, solder, flux, flexipipes, pipe benders, pipe cutters, the lot.

Wanna see what me father come up with for the cold water?

Brace yerself it's pretty similar to abstract art.

I know. Shocking ain't it? In fact the plumber asked me an' me mam why had me father been making pipe mazes. Also, "Tell him he can't solder wet pipes." Was another one. No wonder why when he turned the water back on it were all pissing out the joints.

So my advice to the ladies who has one of these DIY men in their life that can't admit when they've been beaten or have no idea to begin with, yet insist on doing the work themselves 'cause they reckon they'd save some money. DON'T LET THEM. When it takes them the best part of a week to do summat that really should've taken 2 days or so to have everything done just 'cause they're NOT ORGANISED, get a bloody professional in. It'll save you the hassle an' grief you get when the man does it plus your life won't end up revolving around the job at hand. Out kitchen has looked like a bomb's hit it this past week 'cause of all me father's DIY shit hanging around. An' god forbid if you try tidying it up you get shouted at. Yeah, me father's ended up spending more money getting all the shit he apparently needed for this job an' we still had to get the plumber in. So, what money have we saved?

So yeah, we finally have a nice new sink in. First thing me mam did, she turned the water on, put the plug in, chucked in a dish cloth an' some washing up liquid an' shouted "I GOT FUCKING WATER AN' BUBBLES NOW!"

I really wonder about some of you lot...

... then I remember; this is t'internet.

Here are some of me more questionable search keywords I get.

Err, yup.

How the hell did that bring you here?

Okay, them are just plain weird.

Though it is nice to see on that last one that somebody did actually search for me blog. I think. XD

The Importance of Being Northern. Part 1: Th'Imsersion Heater

('ll try to write this as close to English-English as possible just so the Northern bits stick out like a sore thumb, but I can't guarantee anything 'cause it's bloody difficult for me NOT to write Northern.)

So I was watching Phoenix Nights earlier on today with me mam and dad. In the first episode, the main character Brian Potter played by the one and only Peter Kay said to another character Jerry St. Clair played by Dave Spikey "C'mon I want get back 'ave left th'immersion on."

I started laughing at this point, mainly because this is a typical Northern thing. Especially around where I come from. Northerners are generally known to be "tight bastards" and it is true to an extent. Immersion heaters, or "Th'immersion" as we call them are particularly expensive things to run and back in the day before combination boilers that run both the heating and hot water were standard in houses; it was the only thing about that could give you hot water.

But what was actually making me laugh was the fact that this still happens now. Not everyone has a fancy combi boiler in their house or if they do, it might be quite ancient and not work properly so in order for them to have anything remotely near hot water, "th'immersion" may have to go on. I remember growing up with people around me freaking out at the fact that they switched "th'immersion" on early that morning, so they could have a bath and forgot to switch it off before they left the house and it was now mid-afternoon so the electric bill that quarter was going to be "bloody colossal."

Mother was laughing with me on this. Because it's true. God forbid a Northerner leaving "th'immersion" on thus subsequently getting a huge electric bill later on because of it. People pretty much planned their days around "th'immersion" heater. You switch it on in advance for a set amount of time because 1: It took a while for any hot water to get through and 2: Using it any longer than needed was expensive. But even if people were on top of it and knew how to handle "th'immersion" it still come back to bite them in the arse if they did forget to switch it off. People would actually cut any meetings or whatever short JUST to go home to switch the bloody thing off and if they couldn't leave somewhere for some reason; they'd panic like mad till they got home or went scatty trying to find a way to get in touch with someone back at the house or someone who would go round and switch it off.

So really "th'immersion" was and may still be the bane of every Northerners existence.

To be truthful, I've never had much in terms of contact with "th'immersion." I have hower had dealings with back boilers which are basically soild fuel fires that when lit, send heat to the radiators and to the hot water storage tank. The downside being, if you didn't have a back up system like a combi boiler, you had to light the bloody fire for heat and hot water.

But most of the time it has been some kind of heating system that does both. But of course being Northern, that heating system only ever went on when the house was FUCKING FREEZING or you began to stink and needed a bath. If you were cold, you went and put another "ganzie" (jumper) on. And of course, being Northern and primarily working class; personal hygiene was never really at the top of our list. I had a bath maybe twice a week and I washed my hair once a week when I was growing up, maybe my mother bathed me more if I'd been playing outside and got covered in shite. I did have really long hair back then and it was always tied up and pleated so it never really got dirty.

Kept it! And it's the only proof I have of being naturally blonde which NO BUGGER believes.

Since I have had my hair cut when I was 13 and I've been having it cut shorter even more since then I have noticed my hair does get greasy and dirty a lot quicker now. Even so, I still only shower twice a week and wash my hair twice a week too. (The hair I had cut off, I still have it by the way. Mother wanted to keep it so it's in a glass jar in the kitchen sideboard.) There's no need to bathe every day if you're not getting shit order and sweaty. Plus it's doctors orders for me, I have a bunch of skin conditions and washing just makes everything ten times worse.

And before I forget. Another typical thing is leaving the bath water in. No we don't do the Japanese thing of filling the tub with clean hot water then it gets left in for each member of the family to use after each one of them has had a right good scrub and rinse in a separate part of the bathroom. No. Remember, "th'immersion" only goes on for a set amount of time so you'll be buggered if you think it's going on again because the hot water has run out and you haven't had a bath yet. So we share bathwater. So if you had a big family and didn't get in first then the water would be vile by the time you got in. Not only that but it'd be cold too, so mother would top your bath up with the contents of a just boiled "keccle" and scald your back in the process. Not only was it saving money (supposedly) it also happened because Northerners are lazy about things like this. Yes we can graft away at work, but when we get home; Bone Idleness takes over.

That even happened with me when I was growing up even though it was just me, mother and father. We even had proper heating too so there really wasn't a need for us to share bathwater or top up with the "keccle." Old habits don't die that easy, plus I guess you could also say that things like that are genetic. And it all stems from the fact that Northerners are all tight bastards in some way and if we can same money by doing something that isn't a social norm, isn't generally accepted, is very stereotypical of us or is just plain weird then we'll probably do it. Fact of the matter is, it still goes on.

I'll leave you with this, a clip from a Christmas Special episode of The Royle Family. A sort of Northern sitcom. An example of being idle and leaving the water in even with a combi boiler. (Skip to about 2:50 if you want to get straight to where I'm on about, just watch for a bit after that. Or if you fancy it, watch the whole thing! This episode is fantastic.)