Double DIsaster (yes, it's my mother again)
It's hard for me to get in contact with my mother in India in a hurry if I need to, because she doesn't have a phone number out there and only checks her email sporadically. However, when she wants to call us, it's a different matter. I was treated to 5 histrionic phone calls from her this Monday morning, all about how her little flooding problem isn't going away by itself.
I gave her the good news that her pipe has been fixed, the electrics work, and the plumber reckoned that the house would dry out by itself after a few days with the heating on high. The bad news was that someone needed to be in the house to keep an eye on things while the heating was on, because leaving damp houses unattended in that situation was a fire risk. It also needed drying out sharpish, because the mould was getting worse every week. So, the obvious solution was for her to cut her holiday a little short, and come back to live in her house with the heating at maximum. The damp's at the back of the house; her bedroom's unaffected.
This news made her hit the roof. There were ceiling-level dramatics about how she was in a terrible bind of choosing between certain damage to her house and a risk of damaging to her health. I told her that I wasn't the best person to talk to as I hadn't been there recently and she should call the landline in her own house, where she could speak to Sarah, the plumber, and/or the insurance assessor who were all down there trying to sort her problem out as we spoke. She was unable to do this. Apparently she'd been calling Sarah's mobile non-stop for weeks, and it "never worked". The conversation, many times over, went:
Me:"0 7775, that's oh triple-seven five, but leave off the 0 when you're calling from abroad"
Mother:" 0 77 5, yes"
Me:"No, triple-seven"
Mother:"That's what I said. Triple seven. 0 77 5"
Me:"No, 0 7 7 7 5"
Mother:"But that's four sevens. I only ever dial three."
So that's a clue as to why she can never get Sarah on the mobile, but there has to be an even stupider explanation as to why she can't call her own home number, even though other people can.
As I said, my suggestion that she came home early was not well received. In fact, she phoned back fuming a few minutes later to say that she couldn't possibly, because she'd just spoken to the insurance company again, and they had told her that she mustn't come home to live in a house that was damp and at risk of catching fire at any moment, so that was that.
Fortunately for her, the next tradesman to visit had a different viewpoint from the plumber, and reckoned that it would be best for the builders and decorators to turn up, replaster the ceilings, and dry the house out themselves, and my mother would be well out of the way while all that happened. If she came back before they'd finished, she'd be better off staying with my grandparents until it was done.
This pleased her mightily, and we then got some gushing phone calls of gratitude. She even phoned my grandparents to tell them to phone us to thank us, and at some point she must have managed to type the right number of 7s into her phone keypad, because there was a piteous message on Sarah's voicemail. She's amazed how clever ggguh-I-mean-Sarah was to have turned the electricity, water and heating on and off, and, do you know, she is now too scared to phone the insurance company at all now, the whole experience being just too much, you know?
Now she's happy that other people are going to do everything for her, she's stopped phoning. Normally, I'd be dancing a happy dance of glee about this, but there's one problem.
Her house was burgled yesterday.
She doesn't know yet.
I gave her the good news that her pipe has been fixed, the electrics work, and the plumber reckoned that the house would dry out by itself after a few days with the heating on high. The bad news was that someone needed to be in the house to keep an eye on things while the heating was on, because leaving damp houses unattended in that situation was a fire risk. It also needed drying out sharpish, because the mould was getting worse every week. So, the obvious solution was for her to cut her holiday a little short, and come back to live in her house with the heating at maximum. The damp's at the back of the house; her bedroom's unaffected.
This news made her hit the roof. There were ceiling-level dramatics about how she was in a terrible bind of choosing between certain damage to her house and a risk of damaging to her health. I told her that I wasn't the best person to talk to as I hadn't been there recently and she should call the landline in her own house, where she could speak to Sarah, the plumber, and/or the insurance assessor who were all down there trying to sort her problem out as we spoke. She was unable to do this. Apparently she'd been calling Sarah's mobile non-stop for weeks, and it "never worked". The conversation, many times over, went:
Me:"0 7775, that's oh triple-seven five, but leave off the 0 when you're calling from abroad"
Mother:" 0 77 5, yes"
Me:"No, triple-seven"
Mother:"That's what I said. Triple seven. 0 77 5"
Me:"No, 0 7 7 7 5"
Mother:"But that's four sevens. I only ever dial three."
So that's a clue as to why she can never get Sarah on the mobile, but there has to be an even stupider explanation as to why she can't call her own home number, even though other people can.
As I said, my suggestion that she came home early was not well received. In fact, she phoned back fuming a few minutes later to say that she couldn't possibly, because she'd just spoken to the insurance company again, and they had told her that she mustn't come home to live in a house that was damp and at risk of catching fire at any moment, so that was that.
Fortunately for her, the next tradesman to visit had a different viewpoint from the plumber, and reckoned that it would be best for the builders and decorators to turn up, replaster the ceilings, and dry the house out themselves, and my mother would be well out of the way while all that happened. If she came back before they'd finished, she'd be better off staying with my grandparents until it was done.
This pleased her mightily, and we then got some gushing phone calls of gratitude. She even phoned my grandparents to tell them to phone us to thank us, and at some point she must have managed to type the right number of 7s into her phone keypad, because there was a piteous message on Sarah's voicemail. She's amazed how clever ggguh-I-mean-Sarah was to have turned the electricity, water and heating on and off, and, do you know, she is now too scared to phone the insurance company at all now, the whole experience being just too much, you know?
Now she's happy that other people are going to do everything for her, she's stopped phoning. Normally, I'd be dancing a happy dance of glee about this, but there's one problem.
Her house was burgled yesterday.
She doesn't know yet.