Plumbing story

It started with a toilet.
It broke ages ago and was not filling properly. The story started by me looking into it...nothing much discovered.
Advice given by few men that are in IT profession, opinion rounded that it must be lime scale or that my ball cock needs adjusting.
Another look into it and I discover I have no such ball.
Oli takes a picture of his cistern pointing to the ball cock and sends it. I compare picture to my cistern and deduce from photographic evidence I have no such thing.
I wait for my ex to come back from Australia, it takes 3 weeks, he comes over, has a look into it and doesn't know what is wrong, but he says his stepfather is handy and I will be passed on to him.
Oli has a look into a toilet and realises I was not lying about ball cock. There isn't one.
Stepfather comes over and looks into it and confeses that he has never seen such a system before and thus cannot fix it.
By this time I have been using my bin to fill the toilet to flush for over 6 weeks or so.
Toilet remains a mystery.
My details are given to Dave the plumber as clearly IT does not equip men for rescuing a damsel in distress.
Dave comes and has a look. He is puzzled, he has also never seen a toilet like this.
But a pair of pliers later he fixes a problem by unscrewing a bit I tried to and letting the water pour in.
I realise that this whole thing would have not been an issue, have I had a pair of pliers. Or knew how to use them safely.
Dave fixes a toilet and saves the day.
I now flush just for fun and use my bin for rubbish again.

So then...the central heating/hot water story.....starts off with the darn thing breaking and leaving me freezing. There is an emersion heater for water so I don't immediately go into a blind panic. It is a mild end of October so I won't freeze or anything.
I ring Voitec, a nice Polish heating engineer that came recommended before and actually fixed my boiler before. I leave 5 cheerful messages before I realise that perhaps he doesn't want to get back to me.
I fear not...there is Dave, the wondrous plumber from Essex that fixed the toilet. I ring him, he says he can have a look and to call him the next day. The next day he does not answer the phone or ring me back.
Finally I ring him again and we arrange Monday night. He never shows up. I txt him and he admits he forgot and promises to ring me the next day to re arrange.
He never does.
I leave him alone for a week thinking the guy might be busy and I want to play hard to get...but relent when I realise Dave is plainly not interested.
He answers the phone and sells me the usual avoidance technique...his girlfriend ended up in hospital, contracted MRSA, his mother fell down the stairs, his dad was beaten up and he cut his both hands making it hard to call back...I go along with the story as I am at his mercy...and he says to ring him the next day. I do, he never answers his phone again. After 50 tries, I get closure and let go.

Alan comes recommended and is extremely nice on the phone but he does not drive across town. He recommends another guy in Streatham but that guy does not use Tunnels or Bridges and also cannot reach me apparently... (yes, there is applied sarcasm here)
My ex mother in law gives me the number of the local chap with over 20 years experience...in plumbing maybe, not answering his phone.
Then Harry from Laser plumbing gets recommended to me. He does E1, which is not that far and I get hopeful.
I decide that by now I really need to try my best routine to get someone out and upon hearing 'Hello' I start my conversation: 'Do you come to E12?'. I hear him say 'No' but I persist with my pleading: 'I have been without heating for ages now and the washing is not drying and I have had a lot of messing about with the plumbers that I know' etc etc... and after about 5 minutes of my perfect pleading I realise that Harry said no and disconnected and for the past 5 minutes I was talking to myself. Perfect.

Not losing hope, I finally manage to get a number of Shakil...a brother of the guy I work for. Shakil has a PhD in Sociology but works as a plumber. Apparently he studies for fun. Fair enough.
I ring him and his girlfriend answers. I sense 'Who the fuck are you' in her voice and try to appear harmless and breezy, mentioning a lot that I work for Shakil's brother...
She says in the pretentiously nice voice that she will pass the message.
A week later, I begin to distrust what she said and by then it is so cold that towels are not drying and the washing is completely wet a week later.

I do what I said I will never do...I do the unthinkable...I open the Yellow pages...

(to be continued...)