....It's Luton of course!
Yes yes, I'm in Luton now, after two weeks living like a nomad. Alhamdulillah, at last, I found a pad here for me and my mom. We moved here on Saturday the 26th of July, and I could not stop counting my blessings, although it wasn't really smooth sailing. But the landlord and his family are great people and they tried their best to make us feel home.
The first day we found out that the hot water was not working properly, told him on Sunday, and he promised that someone would come on Monday to fix it. The guy came, but the boiler decided to behave when he was around so surprise surprise, there was no hot water again when he left! But he was a nice gentleman who made some small talks with me, so I didn't know that he was paid 60 quid for just 10 minute worth of talking!
The second guy came on Tuesday, but he also did not solve the problem. My guess was he was with the same company with the first one, but he said something like he needed to talk with the landlord to let him do thorough cleaning of the boiler, and for this he needed to break the wall or something. So I let him go and said I'd tell the landlord about this. And only when Mr J came later that night with another boiler man did I know that the other two guys were paid 60 quid each time and still no result! What a waste!
The third guy was Mr J's friend from Pakistan, and he looked professional, and I was surprised to see that he was willing to come and look at the boiler at that hour (11pm!). To that MrJ replied that he was a friend of his, and said he's a really busy man and since he's good at what he's doing he was booked up during the day. This guy did clean the boiler and put some strong chemical in it and before leaving he told some jokes to me and I laughed with them although he took his time to tell it. After he's done he said insyaAllah the boiler will work again, but the next morning it's back to cold water after 30 seconds of shower!
And then on Wednesday MrJ said he'd taken a contract with BGas and another guy would come and fix the boiler. I was so relieved by this, since a contract means there won't be anymore of "wait a few days and it'll work fine" kind of comments, since they have to make sure whatever they do will amount to results! And this also means MrJ doesn't need to fork out more money for some boiler man to come in and get paid for nothing.
So the 4th guy came at 9am on Friday as promised and I had to take some time to put on my hijab (to which the boilerman thought I was still in bed!). He looked like he knew what he was doing, and he had one small laptop-like machine with which he checked the boiler, and his phone is that superhard panasonic types and I think only handy-men like this would own one cause it doesn't have the camera/3G etc. But I bet they could be thrown on rocks and still work fine. And when I asked him politely whether he'd mine taking his shoes off, he said he could use his overshoes instead. See, only professionals like this carry overshoes with them while they do house visits and I think I want to get some of them so that I can give to visitors who don't like taking their shoes off before entering the house. But I still don't know where they're sold though.
After about 2 hours, he said he figured out what needed to be fixed, and he needed to get the parts and come back on Monday. He put something like smoke detector on the wall and said he'd bill that to MrJ. Poor MrJ, he's been spending a lot for this part of the house since we moved in.
So we've been blessed with hot water since Monday and I'm very pleased. The guy spent more than 3 hours in the kitchen and I really ran out of ideas to chat to him so I spent time between checking up on him and blog-hop. This guy is a lot younger than previous boiler men, and he might even be somewhere around my age.
Another thing about the house: There was only a dryer, which I thought was a washer dryer before. And after talking to MrJ, he promised to buy a washer dryer instead. I said a washing machine would be fine not wanting him to think that I'm demanding, but he insisted, so a few days ago he brought a new one home. But after painstakingly installing it, we found that it wasn't spinning correctly, so it had to be replaced. So today I was waiting for him since morning to come and take it to the shop, and he only came at 4pm when I was in the shower.
I also sold his old dryer for 60 quid. Quite cheap, but better than leaving it outside to stand the August showers! I hope MrJ is pleased with the sale since he did say that he was going to throw it away as he had nowhere to put it! The idea to sell it is of course from me, on the day that he installed the w.m, and he asked his daughter to do it instead. But I had secretly done it myself without knowing that not one, but two ppl would actually be interested! So no more dryer on my front door, yay!
And when his daughters came for their iqra' class tonight, they gave me a key to the front door/gate. He just fixed it today alhamdulillah. No more knocking the door after coming back from the shops!
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