I promised a customer that there would be hot water tomorrow. The final piece was due to arrive today. £1K worth of über fancy kit which would be manhandled gently into position by the three of us, a few connections made, a switch flicked and we would be heroes. No, not heroes. But we would have done what I said we were going to do and that is the most important thing. Especially when the customer is such a gem.

It arrived. The box looked a little dishevelled, I raised an eyebrow. We opened it up on the back of the truck, what was this second hand looking piece of rubbish? Well it was the wrong one for a start, a different model. The box of valve gear and controls was missing, the expansion vessel was from another manufacturer, the manual was also from another manufacturer and had someones scribbled dimensions on it. I went through a panoply of emotions, none of them involving visions of butterflies or daisies.

There is no recourse. The surly demeanor and indifferent tone, the slack jawed staring at the computer screen “There’s another one in Cambridge, you’d need to pay carriage”. I couldn’t face it, the outcome of such and exchange is too unpredictable so Jimmy took it back and we set off on a mission to find something however temporary that would make good on the promise of hot water. We tried, by phone, by iphone, by trade couter. Useless. Unless you want a brand you’ve never heard of, that there is no information available for and it costs the same amount and “Yeah man, they’re really good no? The boy in the office says so”.

What of tomorrow indeed.

Not to say what of the supply infrastructure to the trades in this country. For I wish that this had been an isolated incident.