Trying to find a plumber. Health and safety in former times.

 The weathermen are promising us some cold weather over the next week. Probably dry but certainly cold. So I have been trying to contact a plumber to sort out the heating in the house Number One Granddaughter lives in. It gets a little wearing receiving constant messages on the family group chat about how cold her house is and how the heating only comes on intermittently. Getting hold of a plumber is not an easy task however. My calls to the plumber of choice keep going to his messaging service: ‘Hi, this is …. I can’t get to phone right now. Please leave your message after the tone. ….beeeep!'

I’ve also been waiting for a delivery to arrive - between 11.00 and 13.00 today - they have about ten minutes left to deliver on time. This is a coat, intended as a Christmas present for Granddaughter Number One but she may need to have it as an early Christmas present if it’s going to be as cold as it is.

Update: the plumber  called me back to let me know he’s snowed under with work at the moment. Back to square one! And the delivery was late!

Thinking about warmer places, here is a picture of an overloaded scooter in Palermo, Sicily back in 1963.

And here’s a bit of explanation:

“Bruno Barbey chanced upon this family defying gravity on their dad’s scooter in Palermo in 1963. The French-Moroccan photographer had been travelling in Italy for a couple of years by then, restless for exactly this kind of image, with its seductive mix of humour and authenticity. Has there ever been a better articulation of contrasting roles in the patriarchal family? Father sitting comfortably in his jacket and cap and smiling for the camera, while behind him his possibly pregnant wife sees trouble ahead, as she and their three kids and their big checked bag compete for precarious discomfort.”

Looking back to that time here in the UK, I remember my father riding his bicycle with baskets of fruit and vegetables from his allotment hanging precariously from the handlebars. He also rode with his knees pointing outwards, almost certainly as a consequence of riding with one or other of us children perched on a “seat” on the crossbar. The “seat” consisted of padding wrapped around the crossbar and tied in place. 

Health and safety issues were less carefully managed back then but at the same time, roads here, and presumably also in Palermo, were less frantically busy than they are now. 

My six-year-old granddaughter was quizzing me about what games I used to play and what sort of toys I had. This is clearly a follow-on from the hopscotch business I wrote about the other day. I forgot to tell her about collecting car numbers. This was akin to train-spotting but involved less travel. We used to spend time sitting in groups on the garden wall with a notebook; cars came so rarely down our road, which was nonetheless a fairly major road, and we would duly note down the kind and colour of car and its registration number. What a prodigious waste of time! Happy days!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!