Now that's worrying

[caddyman]

Well, I wasn't going to write anything today on account of nothing happening this weekend worth writing about.

I decided to stay in and watch the FA Cup Final yesterday afternoon. Now I like my footies, but the game was less than exciting to me as a neutral observer and suffice it to say that I missed to only goal of the game but did apparently drool on a cushion. Yes folks, Our Hero was so fixated by the annual sporting event that he dozed off.

So, come the evening I decided to nip out and have a pint only to find that all but one of my drinking buddies had spent the afternoon I slept through getting royally soused in the same establishement and had as a man, wobbled off to bed well before I arrived.

So as you can see, the weekend thus far was just too exciting to commit to a journal.

Today was less eventful if that is possible.



This evening, I decided it was time to descale the water heater in my kitchen. For those who don't know, I live my life in artistic poverty in a cheap and cluttered attic flat in Clapham which runs to a single cold tap and a water heater. (Ah, the bohemian life for me. Except that I haven't picked up a pencil and drawing pad in anger for years, and a paint brush for even longer. I really ought to do something about that....).

Anyhoo, I digress.

The water heater.

In years gone by, said implement would heat water rapidly and dispense it like some indoor Niagra. But in recent months it has slowed. The water here in Londinium, you see, is at least three parts in ten solid calcium, and this tends to make life awkward for those appliances whose job it is to boil the stuff (I am frequently surprised that I don't get something like molten lava out of the kettle, such is the level of solid dissolved in the brew served up by Thames Water plc).

So, armed with a sachet of trusty descaler, I approached the water heater in attempt to prolong its useful life. The lid wouldn't come off, so I was reduced to pouring the crystals in through the steam holes. It took time, but eventually the aim was achieved.

So now I read the instructions.

'Add water and bring to the boil. Allow to cool for two hours.' Simple enough. So, the water sluices in and a cheery fizzing starts as the crystals dissolve and start doing the job on the centuries of accrued limescale. I turned the heater on and returned to t'other room to muck about on the PC and half watch telly.

There are things they don't tell you about descaler. Especially what happens if you forget to turn the water heater off.

At some point in the evening, it occurred to me that a cup of coffee would be a fine idea. I opened the kitchen door to be confronted with a wall of steam. Bugger! thinks I - forgot to turn the heater off. A dash through the involuntary sauna to open the window reveals the unannounced side effect of boiling descaler and water too long.

Foam. Great galloping wads of it. Lovely. And just to add to the surreal air of a kitchen full of steam and foam, the sound of Mozart played on piano starts filtering through the wall.

Yes, they're at it again, next door. Now I doubt that this is bad as pax_draconis' phantom but it is decidedly odd, because next doors kitchen is a mirror of mine in layout and size. Trust me when I say that there's not enough room to swing a gerbil, let alone a cat.

So how the hell they got a piano in there escapes me, much less why they would want to. It doesn't sound like a cheap piano, either.

Still, unlike pax_draconis, my main interest in the sound is the logistics and dynamics of the kitchen piano, rather than the sound. For, gentle reader, my phantom is at least cultured and capable. The fact that it must be a hunchbacked midget is another matter entirely.

And anyway, it is not so loud that I cannot escape it by disapperaing into my bedroom.

But a piano-playing midget in an attic kitchen? I mean, Good Grief.