Blood for the Baron!

The Baron wrote:Created a fansite

The Baron wrote:Sunday

I had a phone call on Friday from Kev. The gist of it was that he was off to his mum's house for the weekend... no wait, it wasn't a phone call... it was the incessant howling bark of the alsation downstairs reacting to the evil doorbell that roused me not three hours after slumber was forced upon me by the rising sun. Or was that Saturday? Regardless, the gist of it was that Kev was off to his mum's house for the weekend, and could I fit his Car CD player for him before the journey.

Fool, fool fool that I am I said yes. I arrived at Kev's to find Kev was practising, The CD player and carkeys were on the table. I asked Debi if she knew if he'd got the strip of Plasplug I needed. I then tried to explain what a plasplug was, a strip of plastic with screws in for connecting wires is what I came up with, what am I, a mechanic? So she rooted around and found some plasplugs, and I set to work. I remember now, it wasn't a phonecall, Kev came to the door to ask, the dog was barking at him, that's how he gave me the fiver for the petrol to get there. Before setting off I told myself, "don't forget the manual". The manual is the manual for my Car CD player, it's not the same model but has a wiring diagram. Halfway to Kev's I turned back to get the manual. The manual which bears no relation to the wiring in Kev's car. The wiring diagram which does not exist on google. That wiring diagram.

So I delved and discerned which were the 8 speaker wires, leaving me four. The eight I had to twist together to connect and then wrap in insulating tape due to a shortage of plasplugs, but I digress, it's the other four wires that are key. Four wires coming out of the car, four from the stereo. Seven different colours. There were two black wires. According to the diagram, the black wire is the earth. Acording to the kid next door it's the green. After much deliberation Kev and I decided to use our best guess.

So, black to black, red to red & black, and then the other four. It did not light up, it did not roar to life. The kid next door showed us where the on switch was. It ejected a disc and did no more. We swapped the other four wires over. The fuse blew. The kid next door fixed the fuse with a strip of wire and jammed it back on. We pressed on with another combination to get a strange burning smell. We put down the car and walked away defeated.

Before leaving I sat and chatted to Kev in the kitchen, at several points I remarked upon his dripping tap. I offered to fix his tap for him, I'd done it before, it's easy. Off with the tap case, tighten the hex nut, Bob. He said not to worry about it; the red rag to the bull of all catchphrases. I offered a few times, but he said no. I wished him a safe journey to his mother's and left.

Saturday morning dawned immediately upon the midday bark of the attack dog being plagued by invisible doorbells. I shook off the cramps to find a man unravelled. Kev had gotten ten minutes into his journey, ten whole minutes of tortuous hell. The kitten would not settle. There was piss on the seat, the stench of ammonia from such and then there was the incessant kitten voice. He had formulated a new strategy of not taking the kitten in the car but of leaving it behind instead. So he asked me to feed the cats the next day before he got back. Sure, I said, not a problem.

Sunday I forced myself to get up early at 2pm and go feed the cats. And so begins my tail (sic):

The first hour is fairly uneventful, I cleaned the cats bowls, I cleaned the litter trays, I fussed each cat in turn. I fed the cats. There are 2 groups of cats in Kev's house. In the garage are the male and two of the females. They are being kept away from the other female and her three newborn kittens. There is also the journey-sabotaging kitten Trillian. She is affiliated with cat party B. Kev told me it would be fine to let Eric stretch his legs, as long as he expressly didn't go into any of the rooms. Also, to avoid confusing mother cat with either her sister or mother, I closed the door on cat Party B. The door for cat party B has no handle, it has the inner latch, and on the banister beside the door is the long squared pole that fits between the missing door handles. You slot it in and twist it to open the door. I do not know why it is like this, only that it is.

Having performed my catly duties I turned to leave. Upon reaching the front door the sound of a dripping tap caught my ear.

I'll just have a look, I thought, surely it can't hurt to look. So I had a look. Sure enough beneath the tap cases were two hexnuts, all I needed was a wrench. I hunted for a wrench. In the cat party B room, the room with the missing door handle, I finally found a pair of pliers. They'll do, I thought. I returned to the dripping tap with a glint in my eye.

Beneath the sink was the stopcock. Hey, I thought it was a stopcock, alright? OK, fine. Beneath the sink was a dishwasher outlet that looked like a stopcock. Let me just point out at this stage that beneath the sink was a boobytrapped dishwasher outlet that looked like a stopcock. Boobytrapped? you ask. Boobytrapped, I say. Now on any given day a switch was two settings, on and off, normally being 180 degrees apart. I moved the blue plastic tap one stinking degree and the flood was unleashed. f*ck! I thought, and immediately turned the tap back. It snapped into two halves and came away in my hand. Switches don't do that, it was boobytrapped I tell ya.

The first thing I did was grab everything in the cupboard and move it into the hallway. This included the typical kitchen sink cupboard chemical products and a stanley blade, so I instantly closed the doors on all the cats. Then began the frantic hunt for towels between failed attempts at gripping the 5 millimetre tap stub with a pair of pliers too big to fit behind the sink U-bend. The same U-bend which, combined with the shelf beneath, prevented any form of receptacle being positioned beneath the pour. I rang Mark.

Mark was boxed in the driveway, and couldn't bring me tools and towels. I ran next door barefoot and dripping to be greeted by two snarling terriers. As the gibbers set in the neighbour came to the door, I asked her if I could borrow a wrench, to my surprise she said to me, "What's a wrench?" While I pondered the meaning of this, she went to ask her son. After two minutes of frantic dancing she returned and said "Nope, no wrench, sorry." She pointed to a white van and told me that the guy who owned it was a mechanic. I hurtled to his front door and knocked politely. I knocked. I knocked again. I hurtled back to the kitchen and emptied the enormous saucepan and wrung the towels out into the sink by squeezing them to my chest and hurling them back onto the floor.

My phone rang, Mark had told Dan, who was offering to cycle over with the toolbox. I asked him if we could get Lee to drive him, and resumed mopping squeezing emptying soaking and generally slipping into full-blown panic. I raced back to the white van house. No reply. A word popped into my mind. The word was Improvise. I ran back to the house and hunted for it. Something, anything, the thing that I needed. In answer to an apparent prayer I found it in the cat room. A red washing machine hose. The same fit as the dishwasher stopcock. I raised it up and roared in triumph, I wheeled round to find there was no door handle.

Dan refers to this as The Clouseau Moment.

It was at this stage of events that my mood went a distinct shade of perpendicular.

I escaped from the cat room by cunning application of a screwdriver wedged into the hole, flew down the stairs, dived into the kitchen, battled the icy torrent and attached the hose. I threw the other end into the sink and cursed the humour of the gods. There was a knock at the door, I slipped to my feet to let Lee and Dan in to instead find two eight year old sisters. "Can we borrow a stanley knife, please? Our mum's laying a carpet." I explained that it wasn't my house and I had no idea where the stanley knife might be. Hey, I may not be a mechanic but I'm not THAT stupid.

I mopped up the floor. Enter Lee and Dan. Lee, being the voice of reason, said "What the f*ck have you done now?"

They calmed me down and helped me mop up. Shock set in and we chatted. I decided the best thing to do would be wait for Kev to get back so I could apologise and explain. Water was now hurtling down the plughole, so we decided to hunt for the stopcock. The real stopcock, you see, none of this boobytrap nonsense, not any more. We looked in the bathrooms, we looked in the toilets, we looked in the garage, we looked behind the washing machine. We looked behind the dishwasher. This was when I found the blue washing machine hose coiled up on top of it, hidden by the counter, not two feet from the dishwasher outlet trap. Those pesky deities will pay for this day, oh yes they will. Lee says "maybe it's in the garden?" So I head down the stairs to the cellar door. Kev's house is on a slope and the back door is a storey lower than the front, hey, I'm no structural engineer, stop looking at me like that.

Fortunately though, before I reached the outside world I found the second pool of water.

Lee and Dan both barrelled downstairs at the sound of my gurgled squawk. They barrelled upstairs and grabbed the towels, and barrelled back again. Phase two was hampered by the fact that the plasterboard ceiling above was soaked through. The water was seeping through along the seams, causing a criss-cross pattern. Lee noticed that the water had also surrounded two of the sunken lights and managed to throw the tripswitch before I electrocuted myself, or burned the house down, or both.

So we cleaned up the downstairs lobby and prayed that the ceiling would not collapse. My laughable hopes of getting away with it evaporated. Thankfully the downstairs bedrooms were both dry. Kev has a lodger named Rich and an empty room to rent. Rich was out at the time.

Having checked the entire house for pools we collapsed in the living room, and began to unwind. Talk turned to the cats, neither Dan nor Lee had seen the newborns so we went back to cat party B's room. I recounted the tale of the door handle and The Clouseau Moment was born. We went ooh and ahh over their tiny everythings and that's when I spotted it. Before me was a circular metal nut from a dishwasher hose, minus the hose. "A pity that isn't sealed" said I, "It would close the outlet". To which Lee pointed out that a tuppence would fit in the hole nicely.

And thus was the plan to foil the outlet was hatched. Worth mentioning is that Dan was against the idea from the start. Lee and I cobbled a cap together by sealing the tuppence in place with Mastick and we snuck up on the sink. Now, the U-bend above the shelf allows no room for a bucket. Or a saucepan. Or a bowl. Or a wok. The only object that fits is a pint glass. The plan was to whip off the hose, catch the water in the glass, and slam on the stop. With hindsight I can only imagine the gods frantically placing their bets at this point. So, off came the hose. The pint glass immediately filled and overflowed. I slammed on the stop and began to tighten. Only it didn't bite, it was too wide. In a frenzy of strangled curses I reattached the red hose and retreated from the drenched field of battle to regroup and dry out. Lee folded the pipe upon itself, wrapped it in electrical tape and the waters subsided. We had won, somehow.

And then began the long wait for Kev to return. After an hour Lee and Dan left, I was set to leave with them until the X factor crept up on me. Rich the lodger. Kev wasn't due back until midnight, he wasn't leaving until after the world cup, but Rich was an unknown quantity, I'd never even met the man, someone had to stay behind and warn him not to turn on the lights.

If first impressions count for anything, then Rich's first impression of me scores somewhere between loser and maniac. I had sat in the lobby looking at the ceiling. I had sat in the kitchen looking at the floor. I had collapsed in the living room to ponder why I was such a total f*ck-up, and why I never listen when people tell me not to. I felt wretched. I felt dreadful. I realised that this was my biggest f*ck-up ever. I've never broken a house before, I hung my head in shame. I heard a door.

I leapt from my seat, heading for the door down the hall through the kitchen down the stairs to the back door to scream "DON'T!" as Rich's hand reached for the lightswitch... but Rich wasn't at the back door, he was in the hall and I nearly barrelled into him. Picture it. You return home to find a sodden towel in the doorway. You look up to a dripping ceiling. You run up to a dry kitchen and turn to investigate. You step into the hall to meet a charging barefoot metaller, soaked to the skin, flailing his arms and rotating his eyeballs who says "DON'TTURNONTHELIGHTSI'VESOAKEDTHEKITCHENANDIT'SFLOODEDTHEELECTRICSANDIT'LLBURNTHEHOUSEDOWNSORRY
ICAMETOFEEDTHECATSANDITRIEDTOFIXTHETAPANDIT'SALLGONEWRONGSOISTAYEDBEHINDTOTELLYOUNOTTOTURNTHELIGHT
SONSORRYYOUMUSTBERICHI'MJIM." He laughed and said don't worry about it.

I resumed the wait. Lee and Dan returned, and steered me from the abyss toward reality. Lee turned from the voice of reason to the voice of doubt. "Maybe it would be better to tell Kev know now, rather than unloading it all on him when he gets back late, he'd probably want to know as soon as possible, I know I would, he might be more pissed at us for not telling him straight away." I froze at the possibility, Kev wasn't due back for another few hours, maybe it would still all go away. My fear was of him driving back in either a state of rage or a state of panic, and having an accident. Lee pointed out that, like myself, Kev is incapable of driving in anything other than a state of rage. Scuppered.

So I tried to figure out what to say to him. We watched Kev's team lose the world cup.

Fifteen minutes of gnawing my toenails while rocking backwards and forwards yielded no insight. Dan suggested saying "Look man, I'm afraid I've had a bit of an accident with the tap. It's sorted now but I just thought I should warn you." I tried it on my tongue and translated it into "bwaaait'sallgonewrongi'msorryi'vefloodedthekitchenandi'msosorryandtheelectricsarewetandi'veruinedeverthingandidon'tdeservetolive." Lee looked me over and thought it best that he ring Kev.

I closed my eyes and cowered while Lee made the call. He was masterful. He said that, rather than turn up later as arranged, he was gonna be there waiting when Kev got home, because he was actually there already as he'd brought some tools over for me to fix the tap with. Kev set off on his journey with neither a sense of panic nor elevated rage, looking forward to trying out his fixed tap.

So Kev and Debi returned. I knotted up my guts and apologised. I explained. I apologised. I apologised. I threw myself on their mercy.

They didn't give a sh*t. Not about the kitchen. They were more annoyed that Eric had snuck into the living room and sprayed the furniture.

I spent eight hours of dread and shame and that cat goes and trumps me. He can only have done it in the ten minutes of headless chickening, I'll bet he did it when I was locked in the room with no handle. In fact, wait, I bet it has him that shut me in there. Actually, it was Trillian who caused it all by refusing to travel in the car in the first place... clearly they're in cahoots. Evil wrapped in fur.

Tomorrow I shall return to Kev's with the vax for the living room and a cap for the dishwasher outlet. If all goes well I should be able to restore the house to normal before the potential lodger arrives at 4pm to view the spare room. If all goes well. How hard can it be?

I am not a mechanic. Nor am I a structural engineer. Neither am I an electrician. I most certainly am not a plumber. I'm going back to rock 'n' roll because, frankly, it's the only f*cking thing I can do.

That or become a fireman, how much mayhem could I possibly cause with a fire engine and an axe?