The plumber came today, because yesterday was a lovely sunny day. The sort of day that comes in late January and makes you go round the garden saying "Hello" to your daffodil bulbs where they are just daring to stick their heads above the surface. Anyway, it was really nice and the man over the road must have thought so too, because he decided to clean his car. From tip to tail and with a polish and shine of coloured wax to finish it off. It certainly looked splendid.

In fact it looked so splendid, that I decided to clean my car. Nothing spectacular, just a wash to get rid of the winter months' accumulation of grime, and just for the pleasure of cleaning it up, and anyway I had a car shampoo that had the wax already in it. The colour would have to stay the same.

My car was also for once conveniently parked down beside the house instead of out in the road, and so I could give it a thorough rinsing off with the hose. The cards were falling well for the enterprise.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I got the bucket, I got the mop, I got the shampoo. I went into the garage and found the old hose - to avoid having to unwind the new, flat hose from its reel (because it's a pig to rewind- but alright in the summer because you can leave it out). I asked my husband - who was busy watching rugby on the telly - to attach the hose to the kitchen tap for me.

Step one on the rocky road to watery hell.

"Why not just take it down to the car wash?" he said, almost tearing his eyes away from a scrum.

"Spend money when I can do it myself on a nice day like this" I said..

"Not ****** likely!"

Step two.

I filled the bucket, added the shampoo, and got a good lather going. The dirt came off a treat, and it was looking good...

The moment for suds-away came, I got my husband unglued from the TV again , stood poised on the top kitchen step with the hose nozzle in hand, and gave the go-ahead for the clean water to go on. I waited. I watched the hose get fatter as the water approached - and then it just stopped. Hmmmm.

I heard a muffled squawk. I looked in the kitchen and my husband was clutching his front as though shot. His front was very wet. The side of the mixer tap had come right off and sent a jet of water clear to the back of the kitchen. Well, it did go clear to the back after he had flung himself out of the way.

I accused him of not laying the hose straight. He seemed more concerned with the fact that the tap was still leaking - well, spouting - than that my car was sitting covered in suds, and drying fast. I had no time for this hysteria, and went next door to ask if I could fix our hose to the neighbours' tap. They said "Fine", and I carried on rinsing my car. Just as I finished I noticed that the water pressure seemed to have dropped.

"Is the hose all right in your kitchen, Dave?" I called to our neighbour.
I heard a muffled squawk.

The hose had blown their mixer tap clear out of its moorings. They were very nice about it, and actually it transpired that it wasn't really broken, and it would fix back on quite easily. They were new neighbours and accommodating. I decided to beat a retreat, and anyway the car was rinsed now.

Meanwhile - back in our kitchen........

Well, the long and short of it was that in order to get the tap off for replacement, the pipes had to be sawn. This involved frantic searches for a succession of tools, including allen keys, spanners(why does no-one ever put his tools back when they use them), wrenches (wrong sizes), stop cock handles (dropped behind sink unit), saucepans to catch drips ....etc.

Finally, we admitted defeat and set off to the DIY centre to buy a new set of taps. (Remember - I was the one who didn't want to spend money on the car wash).

At the DIY centre we had to buy a set of mixer taps, a tool to hold the pipe, a book on home plumbing (just in case) and a packet of flower bulbs (because they were there). This cost a fair packet. Remember......?

When we got home and had fought our way into the sealed packet that the mixer taps came in and my husband crawled back under the sink , it soon became clear that the pipes that came with the mixer set would never ever (without serious pipe-bending equipment) marry up with the creative, and rather art nouveau, pattern of plumbing used by the previous house-owner when he had installed the sink-unit.

By now time had passed, the water was turned off (except for a drip under the sink), and we had created an air-lock in the system by pulling the loo chain and filling kettles with the water off. Thus - we now had no water at all.
So - we got a take-away to avoid washing up (every cloud has a silver lining) and this morning I went through the Yellow Pages.

The plumber came today. He was a very nice man, and he fitted our new taps, and cured the leak, and put a new stop-cock on. And it came to £185.20.

Remember.........