The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
The glamorous life of a tradesman... or woman
With her husband away and a crisis on her hands, Fiona contemplates the lack of a feminine touch in the plumbing industry
This week I have been clearing drains. It is not quite the highlight of a busy life, you’ll be glad to hear, but it is a necessary operation. The chief is away. The heavens open – and stay open for some time. After several hours water is threatening to overrun the back courtyard and there is nothing for it.
I must find a bucket. I must put on a pair of long rubber gloves and get to it. It is a glamorous life – not!
Yet getting down and dirty can prove more therapeutic than you might imagine.
Yes, unblocking a drain is a messy business. Yes, it smells like billy-o.
But to see that potential flood drain away, to hear the satisfying gurgle as the rising tide abates and disappears down a clear channel...
Disaster is averted. Hurrah!
The man of the house may not be here, but who says a girl cannot do a man’s job?
Yet for every one hundred male plumbers there is barely one female plumber.
Are we really that worried about breaking a nail, or running the risk of seeing something unsavoury?
When you think of it, is plumbing any more of a mucky matter than putting compost on the flowerbeds? Or doing a job that deals with bodily fluids?
This week our daughter comes home for a few days and it’s lovely to see her.
Blonde and bubbly, she has just finished a university course – another one – and is now looking for a job.
As it happens the timing is fortuitous because Stevie the plumber is also here at the house.
He has come to give a quote for installing a new shower room and, as fate has it, he is looking for an apprentice to join his firm.
We have some fun at the thought of Natasha getting a trade. Of how she will have to tie her golden tresses back and roll up her fashionable sleeves.
But what a great job it could be. Just think of all the money there is to be earned working with water and heating systems.
Plumbers call the customer shots. They are rarely short of business and they always seem to be taking expensive holidays.
Then there’s the fact that having a plumber in the family would be a most useful thing.
In fact, having anyone with any DIY
If he knows that, he may decide in future that all sewers and gulleys are my responsibility
skills in the Armstrong MacGregor household would be a most useful thing.
Yet I don’t think it will happen. Stevie takes one look at her fingers and sees a pair of manicured hands that would not sit well with wrenches.
When he gets home I don’t tell the chief about my triumph with the drain. If he knows that, he may decide that in future, all sewers and gulleys are my responsibility.
That said, I could happily get to know one end of a pipe from another. But I’m too old to change horses mid-career.