What a gas
James Hughes-Onslow
It's exactly a year since my house was converted to North Sea Gas, that gold bar in Britain's backyard, and five straight idiots from the North Thames Gas Board came round to make an occasion of it. This brings to thirty-six the total number of technicians who have arrived on the doorstep to bend their minds to the problem. It's been a good year. They haven't quite finished the job.
I missed the early part of the latest episode because I was asleep at the time, although I'm told they rang the bell, manipulated the hefty brass door knocker and shouted through the letter-box. When I
gradually became aware of the noise outside, the pneumatic drill compressor, the heaving of paving stones etc, I didn't believe it. It could not be the gasmen again.
But it was, of course, and one of the five men, already up to his waist in a hole in the pavement, was almost hidden from my view by mounds of earth that he had excavated, forcing pedestrians to cross the street. Three reserve diggers were watching and the fifth man, with a blue raincoat and a clipperboard on which my record was documented in detail, was clearly their overseer.
They pretended to be so intent on the job that my appearance on the scene was made to seem quite irrelevant, even when I had joined the four men looking down the hole. In fact, I believe, this is their way of intimidating people who, according to their records, haven't paid the bill.
I was expected to make the first move by asking what was going on. I didn't because this seemed rather too obvious and I was trying to think of a better line; particularly as I knew that I had paid the bill—indeed I happened to have a cheque, for £37.01, cashed by the Gas Board and returned to me with my bank statement. The man in the hole noticed that I had a cheque and being less keen than the others to continue with a charade at his own expense, alerted his clipper-board colleague who decided on reflection to make an exception of my case and initiate the dialogue himself.
'Small matter of an unpaid account and we have instructions to disconnect the supply,' he said, still not quite acknowledging that I was there. He stood back from the hole shifting his weight from one leg to another, turning from side to side, looking at the sky and at the road feigning indifference to the enormity of my problem. 'My men will reach the main in fifteen minutes unless we have a settlement. We would have come round earlier if we could have got the compressor. We had no alternative. We were unable to gain access to the main cock ...'.
I used to be patient enough to play along with this drivel but, after a year, I am no longer. Producing the cheque would stop him at a stroke. Instead I let him take his time, going through the papers to show that the Gas Board had no record of the bill being paid, while the hole was still getting bigger even after he had seen the cheque, with a Gas Board rubber stamp. It was only after he had delivered a lecture on the evils of not paying bills, irrelevant in this case, that he said, 'OK George, fill her up.' All four filled the hole up, smashing a paving stone in the process.
The lesson is that it is not evil, but rather wise to avoid paying bills if the Gas Board cashes cheques without adjusting the books. I have another bill, for £37.85, incurred by the Natural Gas conversion people. They were simply installing a fire which they had previously disconnected in a room. For this, a £17.60 labour charge, and £20.25 for materials. I had nine gas fires, two stoves and three water heaters in the house before
conversion, but afterwards a more than 50 per cent casualty list. For most of last year (now I'm only two fires down) only four fires, one stove and one heater were in action.
I got most of the work done just before Christmas but only because, after repeated approaches through normal channels, I wrote to the area supervisor saying that if he didn't send someone to fix the unusable appliances, I'd be round to smash his glasses. It embarrasses me to admit this but this serious threat of violence bypassed the usual bureaucratic paperwork and was brought to the boss's attention. Two much more important gas-board officials promptly came to see me. They got things moving. But I think I was lucky that my letter had been opened by a sensitive fellow wearing glasses. Otherwise, of course, it would have been an empty threat.
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