Being Stalked by the Water Board

The Water Board rang me again tonight … must be the 11th time … I think I’m invited to their Christmas party .. well ok it was me that rang them first I admit – and I usually play so hard to get.

My bill seemed to have gone up by a trillion chiggerbites … and I’m apparently ‘on a meter’ so I thought I’d go outside and read it … but where is it? How are you supposed to know that kind of stuff? So I went outside to look for it – round and round I went … could I find it?!

So I rang them and said "would you like to go to the pictures?" ...

not really, really I said "where is my water meter because I think I might be paying for the whole street?".

They looked it up and said it was down the side of my house to the right, and I said "but that’s like a brick wall with no meters on it" but I went outside anyway and examined the wall in a John Cleese like fashion .. in case it was hidden behind a snail or something and water meters had become like the size of a chip that James Bond would have under a fingernail.

No show.

James Bond wasn’t there either. So I rang them again, and they came up in my favourite numbers - they said try the other side of my house … so after snooping around the neighbour’s house thinking bad thoughts about them inside nonchalantly sipping the water I was paying for, laughing whilst leaving taps on, walking away from the washing machine smirking having turned it on with one pair of pants in it, I came to the conclusion their meters weren’t mine as they said G and E on them I assume for gas and electricity or maybe my neighbours’ names are Gary and Edith.

Not a W in sight. So I rang again using the Friends and Family service this time, and said "call me wacky for Water but I can’t find it" and they said they’d come in in errm 4 weeks and that Hunt the Water Meter was a free service and I said "fine". It might catch on and become a party game – I’ve certainly had more fresh air since this whole thing started.

Lo and behold, the next day they rang and said they’d had a cancellation … like this was getting almost pervy … so I said yes I’d meet them at home at some point between 8am and 1pm (like I’ve got no life – just stand in the hallway from 8 til 1 staring at the front door) but to be honest I couldn’t face it – maybe shyness, first date nerves maybe … and got my daughter to stand in for me …

When I came home , she said the man had been nice (what difference does that make?) and the water meter was in the ROAD …quite frankly dangerous, and how would I have known that. Anyway, the (nice) man had checked the meter and it was errm CORRECT …there weren’t any leaks and I wasn’t attached to Milton Road swimming pool … so even though I share the bath water with the girls .. and use the cold teapot to water the flowers and would die in shame if I got a hosepipe out .. anyway it won’t fit on the taps … it must be the Rivers of Babylon/Niagara Falls showers my son has that I’ve failedto mention.

I took it well.

Then they rang me the next night and asked me out for a meal … ok no … they rang me to see if I was customer satisfied …. ooh errr missus … you bet.

A ‘quick’ survey he said …. After 20 minutes of saying 10 for unbelievably excellent to everything just to speed it up ..he let me go.

Then tonight the phone rang again, ironically just as I was getting in the bath … quite a measly shallow one as it goes, and it was the water board to make sure I am customer satisfied.

I’m SO customer satisfied I am thinking of getting a customer satisfied with the water board tattoo   . .  .