I haven’t been to myPub™ in over a month. I had full intentions each and every weekend to go out and have some fun, but Life has an annoying way of intruding on myPlans™.

A couple of those weekends I was just bored/depressed/broke. On another I had a hæmorrhoid the size of a golf ball. Oh, I’m sorry, that was a little personal. Let’s just say that I was rectally-impaired and move along, shall we?

Then there was the minor matter of a broken pipe in my living room ceiling. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I had twice reported mystery stains appearing on the ceiling and requested they check for a leak. The leasing office declared said leak to be non-existent after careful inspection. They then promised to send over a painter during the week to paint over the mysterious stains appearing on my ceiling. Which is much like giving your car a new coat of paint to cover up the crushed-in rear end. Needless to say, the painter did not show up anyway.

Whilst reclining on my sofa in front of the telly, I noticed a mysteriously loud yet rhythmic donkk-donkk-donkk. Due to some crack detective work I discovered a sizable water leak dripping through the living room ceiling and onto the rug. The Mexican maintenance man [nice alliteration!] arrived after an hour. He moved half of my furniture, covered the floor with plastic sheeting, set-up a large rubbish container, and then gingerly tore open a three-foot square hole in my ceiling. My pipes were rather embarrassingly left exposed.

We then communicated in a fluid stream of broken English on his part and even more broken Spanish on my part as he explained that the pipe was “caca”, that I have a beautiful home [for a crappy building], and that he needed to call the manager at home to request permission to call an emergency plumber. Clearly, the situation warranted higher authorisation than the water dripping steadily from the ceiling.

After the emergency plumber was alerted to the pending disaster and while we waited I made my guest a cup of coffee without burning the building down. I also explained to him that the kat who was standing watch from the bedroom was an “Hijo de Diablo” [that’s “Son of the Devil”] despite his innocent appearance.

The plumber arrived, declined a cup of my fabulous instant coffee, and got to work. No sooner had he cracked open a jar of PVC cement than I noticed that the overwhelming fumes were . . . well, frankly, getting me a little high . . . which reminded me that it was WAY past cocktail hour!

The sweet Mexican handyman watched in fascination as I carefully sloshed my usual triple double into a tall glass and added twice that much in water and ice.

“Training for alcoholism”, I soberly intoned, “takes practice and determination”.

“How many of those you gonna dreenk?” he countered.

“How MANY?” I retorted. “Um . . . well, probably just this one . . . but”, I defiantly added, “I may well have a large glass of wine later”.

Ehhh”, he shrugged, in that casual, Latino, machismo way, “my Ingles she ees not so good. I thought you say you can DREEENK!”

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Humour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.