Sean McGrady

Christ! The Plumber

I opened the door and the man who stood there was more welcome than the second coming of Christ - yes, even more welcome than Christ himself….which I am really not looking forward to…because I am sinner and more, a backslider, a saved sinner who has lost his spiritual way and returned to the reprobate mode of being. Degenerate, corrupt, immoral. I swear, I drink, I lie, I fornicate, I have perverted dreams in mind of women who know not a notion of the place they play in my imaginings. (Imaginings - weak thoughts strong on image. Idle idoling, idolatry. I idolised women.) I am damned, at least in the Lord’s language, in the evangelical vernacular. The Lord has disowned me, he strives with me no longer I am on the hot track to Hades. And heat is very much on my mind.

Wait a minute..rewind…the boiler broke down. There was an abundant absence of heat in a minimal amount of time. In other words, all of a sudden. I heard a suspicious noise in the flue on the Thursday and I know a noise of doom when I hear one. In the car I can recognise a not normal noise. I am always right that something is wrong. On the basis of a noise alone. The boiler is a new contraption but I was putting the rubbish out and I heard it above me…from the flue high up on the wall. A choking, gurgling timbre that was most certainly not a sound sound. A sound that was unsound in fact.

My next move was to visit the holy of holies, the place of warranties. The ark of the covenants. Agreements. Lordly and worldly. My little safe box full to the brim and running over with documents. Oh how happy I was when I picked it out and held it high to read the magical words that mean my day of atonement has arrived, that I am covered (the original Jewish meaning), I am saved (the Christian meaning), I need only ring the magical number on the 24 hour hotline to enforce my right to salvation.

But standing between me and the water of life, hot showers and cosy central heating on the predicted coldest weekend this winter is the satanic She of the switchboard. The wicked witch speaks the words of doom. A definition. A restriction. The flue is not part of the boiler, it is therefore not covered. See your installer! the She says. I didn’t say it was the flue, I said, and told her that the noise was merely from the flue and it may indicate a problem with the boiler. No, it’s the flue, She says, probably a blockage and you are not covered. No, I only mentioned the flue to indicate where the noise is emanating from, you are assuming it is the flue, are you an engineer? Here She flew into a rage over the flue issue as if She were protecting the keys of the kingdom of Hell. Why did I say the word flue, why did I mention the fucking flue? See your installer, it’s a flue problem!! was her final flourish. And I was summarily cast adrift into liability limbo.

The cold about me seemed colder. The boiler flashed a fucking LCD light off and on to indicate the demise of its intended function. LF, LF, LF, L fucking F!!! F fucking L!!! What could be more fucking annoying? I needed a hot shower but I imagined the icy droplets pinging onto my goosepimpled skin and the mad race to relative warmth. That brainless She bitch, that stupid tart!!! If I phoned again I’d have to wait in line again on the switchboard and they’d have a record of me saying the fucking flue word. So, I had to go in search of a heating engineer and pay through the nose for it.

Then the holy knock on the door. The bastard postman I thought with his bastard late delivery. If it’s a window salesman he’s fucking going to suffer the torment of an icy boot. I don’t need Victorian plastic windows. That very conceptually corrupt idea burnt through me but added nothing in the way of warmth. Standing at the open door with the cold wafting in from beyond is Nigel. Nigel? Yes, Nigel. The Albert Perks (Bernard Cribbins) of the plumbing world. If you’ve seen The Railway Children you’ll know what I mean. The steady station master with the unshakeable morals of an upright working class Victorian, (not the plastic alternative that has all too easily been bought). But he’s the salivating image of Bernard Cribbens as well. The bloated eyes, the white woolly sheepy hair. What the fuck was he doing at the door with all those features? My door? Looking with his bulging beady eyes into my freezing hallway. On his authoritative recommendation I had the whole apparatus of gas and water installed about two years previously. His excitement for the product was unnerving. His interest, his tendency to be obsessed with fuel economy and efficiency concatenated with equal economy (that William of Ockham would have been proud of) my ideas of opposition to the tradesman tendency to advance the case for the practical judgement over the theoretical. In fact it was an advancement of a denial that anything beyond the practical existed or was worth a mental glance. The uninitiated in matters of trade technique were looked upon, and talked to as, idiots. How was it that all those kids who left school early to do apprentiships, thought of themselves as possessors of a unique form of knowledge? Nigel has a folder that is carried like a Bible. He opens it reverently for therein lies his sacred text, the facts and figures and measurements. And from that text he preaches his gospel. Nigel is an evangelist, with a power of conversion, a converter of the domestically destitute who have plumbed the depths of discomfort.

Just passing, he said, wondered how the boiler was doing. It’s not doing, I said. So without hesitation he slipped past me, with a wink, and set about fixing it. Out with his toolbox, off with his jacket, into my kitchen. And he didn’t take a cent. No no! he protested with his hand palm in my face warning away my thrusting attempts at payment. That was as warming as the heat I now enjoy.

OK…that I had to inspect and pass praise on his new full back tattoo, pleasure him with a bounteous blowjob and allow him rear entry are matters of small consequence. His pleasure in his coming freely is the thing. That’s why I am the sinner that I am. As God is the great I AM, I am the great I am sinner.