Mother Flood Drama
Last week when I was out, I got an email from my mother titled "Horror". It turns out that her house in Essex had flooded after a pipe burst during the cold snap, the ceiling had come down, would I go and check it out, and her insurance company was X. I wanted to help, but didn't immediately rush down to Essex, because...
1.I didn't have a key to the place, and didn't know which of her neighbours did.
2.There didn't seem to be a huge rush, as the neighbour who noticed it had turned the water off.
3.The insurance company won't talk to me without her permission.
I waited at home knowing she would phone the next day, and she did, but she wasn't happy. She talked to Sarah not me, and basically had a go at her, going on about how we had to help her or she'd have to come back early from India, get pneumonia, and DIE. Yes, DIE! In the process, she managed to constantly refer to Sarah by her old name. And no, it wasn't just Boyname-I-mean-Sarah, she called her by the full form of her old name, the kind that would only get used at formal occasions. I can appreciate that she was a bit panicked and upset, but if you want someone to do you a favour, most folk at least attempt to ask politely. She said that the insurance assessor would need to see the damage, and would FullBoyname let him in and talk to him. Sarah put her frostiest voice on and said it might be possible, if she was given a date and time, but would it not make more sense for the retired neighbour to let him in, as he was the one on-site with the key. My mother then ranted a bit about how the neighbour wasn't family, and she'd pay us TWO THOUSAND POUNDS for talking to the assessor. Sarah of course then said it wasn't about the money, and of course we'd go and visit, although we couldn't promise anything, and the phone call ended before anyone went up in smoke (although I had water on hand because it did look like my wife was about to explode).
We went to visit the house, placated the neighbour, and found the damage wasn't too bad at all. It looked awful, because the ceiling above the landing had come down, and showered the stairs almost ankle-deep in loft insulation, but there was not much damp, no structural damage, possessions all OK, and the place was basically habitable as soon as it had been checked out by an electrician and the services switched back on.
I emailed the photos to my mother with a reassuring list of jobs: replaster, recarpet, mend pipe, but she's still making drama. Her email reply was all about how she's "too scared to come back", "maybe it's been one shock too many", and how "the insurance company won't pay up because they said I had to prove that the house was adequately heated while I was away, and I can't prove that now the power's been switched off."
As far as the cause of the leak, she squarely blames the "Man From British Gas". Every time she's been away in the winter before, she's paid a "Little Man" to come and turn off the water and drain the tank, but this time she didn't, because the "Man From British Gas" said that she wouldn't need to, as long as she kept the heating on and set to at least 15 degrees. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, as one of the justifications she has for going to India each winter is that she said she couldn't afford all the heating bills that would mount up if she was in the UK, but hey, who said my mother had to make sense?
Not only am I getting snowed under with emails from my mother alternately panicking and gushing (telling me how she'd be in even more terrible trouble if it wasn't for all the wonderful pictures I took of the poor house) but my grandmother is doing the same thing on the phone. I had half an hour of my grandmother telling me how awful it must be for my mother, and awful for her too, because no doubt when my mother came back in March as planned she'd have to put her up for weeks and weeks in her home in Plymouth, like she had to last year when it was unseasonably cold and my mother caught flu while visiting her which was very nearly pneumonia and couldn't go back home for three weeks. The one consolation is that once when my grandmother phoned, Sarah answered, and my grandmother was polite and passed on a message rather than using her old tactic of just putting the phone down.
I think it must be a function of dysfunctional families that inconveniences get escalated to full-scale crises. Her house will be as good as it was before after a few days of having workmen in, in fact better because her old carpets will get replaced. I expect her insurance company will pay, but if they don't, her offer to Sarah proves she's obviously got enough dosh to fix it herself. But to listen to her, you'd think someone was about to die.