Quite early on in the four month long saga of our ailing boiler Geoff may well have regretted his rash promise to guarantee his work for a year; he seemed loath to return, sometimes we were angry, sometimes we were embarrassed; sometimes, hoping for a miracle, we left it for a while rather than make that call to our frustrated heating engineer. But, hats off to Geoff for keeping his word and for not attempting to extract any more money from us (a mention of the price of a particular new part fell on deaf ears and since then he has been stoical).
Periodically, upon turning on a hot tap, we have endured the sounds of a fog horn (sometimes like that of a small fishing vessel, but mostly like the Queen Mary!) – short bursts, long bursts and staccato – or we’ve been startled by explosive pops, sometimes frightening blasts (inside and outside), followed by the smell of gas; then we were back to the fog horns and, finally, nothing – no pop, no ignition, no comforting purr and definitely no hot water, let alone central heating. And it is getting cold now.
Geoff came around when we got back from Lorna’s funeral yesterday.
“You hate us and our boiler – don’t you?” I joshed.
“I should have just bought you a new boiler,” he joshed back.
After all this time and so many visits Geoff feels more like a friend than a boiler repair man; and, as I discovered through our countless conversations, he is so much more than that. Our former art student heating engineer is also a photographer, art historian, art collector, world traveller, ex-husband, father, boyfriend and an excellent cook – to list just a few of his achievements.
Geoff was interested to hear about a funny coincidence at the wake only an hour earlier…
I had remarked that one of Lorna’s neighbours at the gathering bore a striking resemblance to the English comedian Hugh Dennis and a conversation about celebrities ensued (as they do). At last I mentioned the chance meeting I had years ago with the beautiful actress, Jean Simmons (of Spartacus fame) who was considering moving to Dawlish at the time. She had been surprised and delighted to find that someone recognised her – “It doesn’t happen very often nowadays,” she told me. And I felt good because I was the only one in Dawlish, amongst all the throng of people passing by, who realised who was in our midst. Just as I was saying what a lovely lady Jean Simmons had been, an old gentleman, hitherto silent as he sat on the sofa, suddenly became animated and said:
“My family, who were jewellers, lived in Golders Green and Jean Simmons’ father and my father were friends. He could remember when Jean was a little girl. She was lovely.”
Geoff agreed that, indeed, it had been a great coincidence.
“But I have an even more unlikely one…” began Geoff gleefully.
“It happened years ago, when I was still married, and we were in Ceylon. We were visiting a Buddhist temple in the jungle of Candy. I had left my wife half-way up the rickety stairs – she was afraid of heights (I could sympathise) – and I had continued going up; there was a log-jam of people coming down and we all had to stop and shuffle by one another. I heard an apparently Sinhalese lady speaking in perfect English.
‘Are you English?’ I asked.
‘No, but my sister lives in England. Perhaps you know my sister?’ she suggested.
I thought, “Oh yeah, how likely is that going to be’ – I mean, Sally, in the whole of England with a population of sixty million?
‘My sister has a hair-dressing salon in a little seaside town called Dawlish,’ she told me.”
“Not the one in the Strand? Not the one my mum used to go to – and her husband was the parking attendant at Somerfields?” I interjected.
“Yes,” Geoff laughed, “I brought home a letter for her from her sister!”
Geoff was right, I couldn’t outdo that one!
And of the boiler? So far so good. I bet Geoff doesn’t want to see the boiler again until next summer but he’s quite welcome to call in for a cup of tea when he’s passing.