Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Mr Fixit and Mr Buzby
by admin - 20:40 on 16 December 2010
For readers of a nervous disposition I'll reveal now that everything turned out right in the end, although it was touch and go for a while.
Having worked for the Chief Gnome on Monday, I stayed away from paid employment today (unlike Matchgirl) in favour of further work on the local version of The Bumper Book of Black Isle Snappery – namely, test pages for submission to Brian at Dingwall Printers.
Having emailed them (isn't technology wonderful) I phoned from my office (that's the spare bedroom to you) to make sure they'd been received and were made up correctly for use on their John Bull printing press.
That's when I discovered that the phone didn't work.
Downstairs, I checked the other phone and found that was dead too. Strangely, the broadband still worked, which allowed me to learn from BT that I could use its website to check the line, but not while I was online. This wasn't particularly helpful. And then the broadband stopped working too. Technology was not so wonderful.
This posed a problem: Mr Fixit was scheduled to arrive soon and bring water back into The Rural Retreat and I was expecting a plaintive phone call to inform me, as most tradesmen do, that he couldn't find the cunningly hidden cottage.
Incredibly, the mobile phone signal lasted long enough for me to leave a message with Mr Fixit and chat with Brian (all was well). That sorted, I did some DIY phone line diagnosis and learned that the phone worked when plugged into the master socket, situated unhelpfully just beside the top of the front door, so the problem was with the extension socket. Mr Buzby, the Black Isle's semi-retired telecom expert, was summoned.
Mr Fixit phoned for directions shortly after that, and for more help a little later. Finally, our water god arrived and went straight to work with much merry whistling. Bess, curled up on the sofa, showed slight concern but ignored him.
An hour later, when Mr Buzby was admitted, the commotion became too much for a sensitive cat who left to sulk in the snowy garden.
An hour after that, all was peace and the mopey moggy back on the sofa. A failed connector in the phone extension socket had been replaced, the ancient bath tap had been repaired, and a brand new shower unit occupied the space (and a bit more) where the old one had been. The melted, smoke-blackened innards of its predecessor were a little disconcerting.
As a bonus, Mr Fixit cast an eye over the Retreat's boiler and hazarded a guess that our poor supply of hot water may be caused by a defective blender valve. Of course. He will return.
A final observation: oor wee Hielan hame, occupied by a Yorkshireman and a North American, was serviced by tradesmen formerly of Oxfordshire (Mr Fixit) and Yorkshire (Mr Buzby). At least Bess is one hundred per cent Scottish born and bred, which may account for her disdainful air – locals are never happy about incomers.
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