Contrasts

[gerald_duck]

I'm feeling better about the world today. The sun is shining, the temperature outside is a balmy 2°C, the settled snow in the back garden is crisp and even, white and virginal, sullied only by two tell-tale lines of deep cylindrical depressions where cats' legs have been. The starlings are scavenging the snow-free ground under some bushes and the doves are perched on a snow-free extremity of one of the taller deciduous trees - their more usual haunt in the conifer is still snow-bedecked.

I've got a certain amount of washing and cleaning and tidying done today. There's plenty more to do, but it's a start. I've also lain in bed reading, then vaguely prodding recreational maths (of which more, possibly, in a subsequent posting).

Yesterday was different. Let me tell you about yesterday, then let us never speak of it again:

• Wake up to discover it's snowing. I'm working from home anyway, so no difficult decision there. Fire up the PC and try to read my office e-mail.
  
• Realise I should have given that a go before I needed to use it in anger. The manky webmail interface turns out to need authentication set up while I'm in the office, but that's OK because I'm intending to tunnel in - and that I have set up.
  
• Discover that Thunderbird has only one global socksification setting so I won't be able to read any other e-mail while accessing the office. Sulk, but get on with it.
  
• The office's mail server rejects my credentials. Eventually work out that it has separate intranet and extranet addresses and, though it accepts connections on the extranet address, it won't then negotiate, even for people connecting from the intranet. DNS sorts this out… except that Thunderbird has no option to resolve via socks. Feed Thunderbird the 10.* as a raw IP address.
  
• Get a phone call saying the plumber's stuck in Oakington because of the bad weather and will be late.
  
• Finally read my e-mail. Discover I broke the build on Thursday evening. Send an e-mail apologising and saying I'll fix it. The e-mail bounces.
  
• The plumber has reached Swavesey.
  
• Realise Thunderbird is now trying to reach my normal mail server via socks for outbound e-mail, said server quite rightly denying relaying for messages coming via my employer. Try to remember the name of the office's smtp server.
  
• Find it. Discover it requires credentials for relaying. Even from the intranet. Give it credentials. Finally manage to send an e-mail. It's now 11:30.
  
• Start fixing the build.
  
• Plumber arrives, starts working on the immersion heater.
  
• He discovers the previous element was fixed in place with silicone sealant. Much scraping ensues. Old element removed with obvious blown-out section; new element installed. Turn water back on; tank leaks around the element. Remove element again and scrape away silicone sealant more thoroughly. Reinstate element; all now seems well.
  
• Bid my goodbyes to the plumber. Have a little lunch. Discover I've run out of Marmite. Feel like the passengers in Airplane II when told the coffee's run out.
  
• Clear some snow off the car and set off for the office.
  
• A few miles down the A14 disaster strikes: it appears I didn't clear quite enough snow off the windscreen and one of the remaining pieces manages to catch the wiper in exactly the wrong way. The wiper forces itself out of the clip on the end of the arm and flies away leaving me in lane 2 of the A14 with the lorry in lane 1 pelting me with icy road grime and no way to clean the windscreen. Staying as calm as one can in the circumstances I slow down, ease into lane 1 and pull off at Spittals. I engage hazard lights and clean the screen by hand then limp the car to Halfords.
  
• Halfords doesn't stock windscreen wiper blades for a Lexus LS400.
  
• I phone the parts department in Lexus Cambridge. It doesn't answer the phone. I phone the sales department and complain; they say they'll have the parts department call me back directly. I wait ten minutes; nothing happens.
  
• I give up and limp the car back to the Shell garage for some petrol, and in the desperate hope they'll have suitable wiper blades. They don't. While I'm in the kiosk paying I miss the call from Lexus's parts department.
  
• I ring them back. "No problem! We can have the part for collection on Monday." Um… that's not my definition of "no problem".
  
• I adopt a counsel of despair and drive - very carefully, with occasional stops for more manual cleaning of the windscreen - to the Toyota dealership in St Ives.
  
• I meet a very nice service manager who understands my predicament. He gets Toyota UK to talk to Lexus UK and put him in touch with someone competent there. Lexus UK works out the part number of my windscreen wiper, then from that the Toyota requisition number for that part. Then Toyota UK runs the requisition number forwards through their parts database to get a Toyota part number. It turns out my car uses the same wiper blade as one of Toyota's light commercials and they have it in stock. Phew! What's more, it only costs £9.81 .
  
• Set off. Reach the office at 3:30pm.
  
• Submit my fix from earlier for inclusion in the release; discover I'm a quarter hour too late.
  
• Agree to socialise in the evening; everyone else picks Chinese, which I can't eat. I become steadily hungrier.
  
• Eventually, at about 9pm I get to Tesco which sells me some much-needed food. Bizarrely, they don't sell 500g jars of Marmite any more - time to visit the cash and carry methinks.
  
• Get home with the car's outside thermometer reading -6°C. Boggle.
  
• Find that, despite leaving the new immersion running while I was out, I only have lukewarm water. Give it up as a bad job and go to bed.

On reflection after a good night's sleep I realise things could be a lot worse. The problem with the immersion heater is trivial: the plumber misinterpreted "The last thermostat was set at 62°C which was a bit hot; could you set this one at 55-60°C?" as "Please, no hotter than 35°C." - easily fixed with a quick screwdriver twiddle. I didn't crash my car and it is safe to use again - but the bare wiper arm managed to scratch a nice arc into the windscreen before I could turn it off, which I'll see about having Autoglass fix on Monday. I now have some Marmite again. Work hasn't lynched me, merely sent me a monkey.

Above all, my car's windscreen hasn't been smashed by a square metre of ice falling on it from a bridge.

Oh, and the staff at Toyota St. Ives are very nice people; please put some business their way if the opportunity ever arises. And Kelvin J. Webb, as recommended by spodlife seem competent enough plumbers - of the many difficulties, only the thermostat setting was their doing.