A few months ago, me and @sarah-xx moved into a dilapidated terrace house on the wrong side of Britain. Maybe I’m making it sound worse than it really is, so, I will elaborate.

The house has: four solid brick walls; a roof; perilous stairs that move and bend with each step; no electricity in some rooms and some sort of monster that lives in the kitchen and eats all the food.

The house also came fully furnished with more junk than we can ever get rid of; most of which is in the, ‘forbidden zone’ known as the basement; which requires a mask to enter due to the black mold growing on all the junk and the basement even has a partially sealed tunnel leading to God knows where.

But things were far worse, when we first moved in: the front door didn’t have a working lock, the toilet was barely clinging to the wall and flushing it involved filling the tank by using the shower attachment and the bathtub would sink every time we stepped in. Also, the boiler sounded like whale-songs, so showering was like being lost at sea.

First, Sarah hired a plumber who looked horrified and snickered: “Oh, I wouldn’t!” when she asked if it was safe for us to take a bath. He told us that the bathtub was no longer reinforced, as the plywood underneath was either broken or rotten.

After hearing that, showering became a terrifying experience, because the bathroom was on the second floor and we have high ceilings. I kept imagining myself plummeting into the kitchen below, so, I was forced to ride the bathtub like a surfboard, while the tub moved with even the slightest shift in my body weight. Taking a shower took a remarkable amount of balance and coordination, neither of which I possess.

So, we fixed the front door and the bathroom, but we kept the pretty whale-songs, because we didn’t care if whales sang at us every time we showered, it was kind of pretty in a haunting sort of way. What we didn’t know, at the time, was that, on dry land, whale songs are a bad omen and on Wednesday our taste of middle class living came to an end.

While filling our new, sturdy bathtub, I noticed that the water wasn’t getting hot. I immediately walked into the hall to listen for the whale-songs. I yelled down the stairs to Sarah, asking if she could hear the whales, but she screamed back:

“We have no pressure! - The boiler is dead!”

A dead boiler might not sound that bad, but in Britain, they use boilers to send hot water to radiators that heat their homes, so, without a boiler there is no escape from the cruel British winter.

Sarah immediately called some socialistic British department of the government to let the Queen know of our plight and they said that they would send an emergency technician out on Saturday morning.

So, after two days of freezing to death, did they come to save us, just in the nick of time, to wrap us in victim blankets and to offer warm coco?

Hell no! The Queen left us high and dry and her aids called Sarah to make their excuses. I was half asleep and I could only hear one side conversation, but I think they said:

“Try to hold on ma’am! - Help is on the way! - We’ve sent the search & rescue chopper, but it’s coming from India, do you think you will be able to hold on for a few more days?”

“Monday is the earliest you have available!?” Sarah asked in disbelief.

“Ma’am, the entire country is in mourning over the assassination of Brexit, maybe you should learn who Brexit was, instead of calling us every time you freeze to death!”

“Yes. A morning appointment will be good,” she said.

So, here we are, stinky, having to scrape by, for two more days, while living in the Dickensian part of Britain. Things are so bad, that I just tried searching for coal on Amazon, while thinking: maybe this will make a good Christmas present for Sarah, but then I remembered that the fireplace was sealed with a layer of plaster that may contain asbestos.

So, unfortunately, I have to keep shopping with stiff fingers that could really use a hot bath with epsom salts.

British-people-problems, am I right?

The Adventures of Rolo Puppy

Rolo Puppy confronts his arch nemisis: the stapled step.